 Who loses the hand that turns these ever-turning wheels? Whence comes the power and the strength? Where dwell the slaves, the giant race that must toil by day and dark to work these miracles? No slaves, no giants. Mark instead these tiny copper strands that stretch across the rim of the sealable world. According to this huge dynamo, this thing almost alive, contrived of lifeless things. Here is your slave, your giant. Hold this wire within your hand. It's thinner than a man's finger and stronger than a thousand men. Look, a spark has bridged a fraction of an inch. And like some initial act of creation, a new world begins to form. Mark these things well. Here is the outline of the future. Here is the power and the pride. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation presents the Power and the Pride, the eighth in a series of programs describing what we believe to be one of the most significant developments of our time, the rebirth of the American South. To report this latter-day industrial revolution, NBC assigned Henry Cassidy, distinguished foreign correspondent, to make a tour through the South and report to us what he saw and heard and felt. Today, he tells us about the development of industrial power in the South, the force that provides the energy for the thousand new factories and plants that have risen across this land. Mr. Cassidy, giant things can often be measured in tiny ways. The path of a glacier is marked by a few scratches on some rocks. In a sense, the tremendous changes of the French Revolution are summed up in the account of a French baker peddling his wares on the lawn of the palace at Versailles. So in this revolution that I had come to report, it was the seeming small things that persisted in the memory. I knew that power, electric power, would be an excellent gauge or index to the change, and so it was. Huge plants throwing their shadows across an acre or more, power lines that marched in precise formation over the hill and back again. But etched always in the memory is the picture of a small water mill on the banks of a now-lazy stream. Once it had been adequate to this little southern town, once its now-broken wheel had set the rhythm for this whole land. Women are still alive, I suppose, who could remember when the weed-choked path that leads to its door was heavy with the traffic of busy men. Now deserted and time-haunted, it stands as a symbol of the change that has come. The wheel is stilled. The weather has found a hundred doors in the walls and crumbling roof. What was once a thing of pride is now a dwelling place for bats and creeping things. Surely this was a starting place for my journey. Perhaps I would remember this and the voices that echoed after the sound had died. It has been the greatest awakening in the people, a desire to really improve their own conditions and do it in their own way. Thirty-five miles due west of Birmingham, a busy little stream the Mulberry Fork, the local folks call it, joins the Warrior River. Here, where the waters join, rises the large steam plant of the Alabama Power and Light Company, a symbol of the changeover from the past to the present and the future. In earlier times, I suppose, this place would be deserted except for wild things and an occasional hunter. Now, it's a stopping place on the long road that we had traveled, a road that leads to factories and electrified farms, to new industries just beginning to develop and old ones revitalized. The steam plant is presided over by a gentleman named A.E. Burnett, strut, his friends call him. Here was the starting place. Here was a man who could tell me in easy, familiar words the meaning of these moving wheels, these fires, these giant motors, warm with stood-up energy. Well, Gorgas was conceived during World War I. At that time, the government needed some power for the production of ammunition and the first unit was built in 1916. Here two additional units was added to this, what we call, the Gorgas No. 1 plant. And then as the years went by and the need for power increased, the other four units beginning with No. 4 in 1928 was installed and then was followed by No. 5 and then 6 and 7. The progress has been always toward more efficient units and to give us a modern steam plant such as the No. 2 plant is now. The process here is to convert the coal into electricity, that's our primary object. We take coal that's produced in the Gorgas mines and put it into the plant. Now the boiler produces steam that takes the water and converts it into steam at very high pressures and very high temperatures. It will generate approximately a million pounds of steam per hour. Steam then goes from the boiler to the turbine where it drives the turbine through a series of blades which converts the fuel into mechanical energy and drives the generator. The generator then produces the electricity that goes out on the lines. It will produce 100,000 kilowatt hours every hour that it's in operation. And so the energy is born, the weapons and the matrix of a revolution. Over the hill and into the valley below, a farmwife throws a switch and within seconds an oven is heated and ready for the soft dough. Watch these dials as dusk comes to this place. Each nervous movement of the hand means that somewhere someone is pushing back the night, commanding this energy to pump a well or milk a cow or light the tubes of a radio scent. You can measure it precisely in kilowatts. You can see the hands move across the dial. But this is not the whole story. There are changes too subtle for these dials. There are other miracles here that cannot be measured in these terms, nor weighed nor charted. It was in the office of Mr. C.A. Collier, Vice President of the Georgia Power Company that we picked up the second strand of our story, a story we would follow across the length and breadth of this land. The smaller towns of Georgia in 1944 were frankly in a very bedraggled condition. Their streets were dirty. There were a great many unpainted buildings. There were a great many buildings in various states of repair. The streets were large and in a great many cases were unpaved, lack of sidewalks, lack of municipal utilities such as adequate waterworks or sewerage systems, a wholly inadequate educational system, and all of the other things that suffer as a result of a lack of income. That was the situation that existed at the time. The people seemed to have lost the sense of beauty and the sense of orderliness to a greater degree than one would anticipate. Many of us in the North, Mr. Collier, were tremendously impressed with a play that had a long run in New York in the 1930s. It was called Tobacco Road, and as you no doubt know, it painted an extremely unpleasant, a depressing picture of certain rural areas of this state. Is there still a tobacco road in the hills that stretch away out of these cities? Of course you realize that the word Tobacco Road was used as a symbol. The outgrowth of long-continued poverty, lack of education, and lack of the other cultural things of life, it was probably typical of all parts of America at one time or another. This program, in so far as my observation goes, and that covers pretty well the state because I get over it, I guess, as much as any other one person, has been entirely eliminated and one would have a very difficult time in finding the material with which to put together another tobacco road story in the state of New York. I wondered about the beginnings of these things that I was seeing. What I wondered was the compelling factor, the initial crack in the dam that was to release the pent-up forces of the future. Of course I know there was no one single factor, but many. There was no single instant of time when the road suddenly turned so gentle with the turning that it was not noticed by the very ones who were charting the new way. And there were a hundred beginnings. In 1934, Mr. Couch, who was the founder of this company, got a group of our engineers together and said that we wanted to get more farms electrified, that that was one of the best things that could be done for the state. This is Mr. Richie, president of the Arkansas Power and Light Company in Little Rock, Arkansas. Here was one beginning at least. A group of engineers gathered together to handle an old problem. It must have seemed a small thing, but the echoes are still sounding. At about that time it was costing approximately $1,500 a mile to build a rural line. That's too much money, we can't afford it. Some fellows have got to get together and do something about it, and told them they had to develop a cheaper method of getting electricity to the farms. Mr. Pittman and his associates developed a smaller transformer and built a rural line like the co-op store using today, and we're using today that cost at that time about $650 per mile. Now in February the 22nd, 1935, we dedicated in the little in the schoolhouse at Magnet Cole, Arkansas, the extension of rural lines into the Magnet Cole and the Prattville areas on an NBC hookup nationwide. We was swapping electric kilowatt hours for eggs and hens and fryers and so forth. And so the wheels began to turn and there was more. William Kennedy again of the Arkansas Power and Light Company gave us a second chapter. We've been working on this rural development program since 1946. We were faced with a basic problem which was directly involved in the rural expansion program, and that's the fact that in order to run electricity to our farm people they had to be economically self-sufficient. We were very much interested along with other rural farm leaders over the state and seeing that that situation existed. We appreciated very much the fact that we were going through an economic change in our farm program here which was involved in change from cotton to livestock diversification of other types. And the reason was because we began to have the money here. The war brought that about to some extent, increasing the price of cotton and so forth and we began to diversify and have livestock. At the same time that we had this economic situation we were faced with something else. Better jobs in the eastern cities and so forth were taking the people away and we realized that we had to do something to keep these farm people at home. Mr. Ritchie took up the story. We have a group of young men that go out and meet with the various communities and help them plan to do a better job and to improve their standard of living in their communities. We like to feel like that the rural electrification program in Arkansas started back in 1917 when the Arkansas Power and Light extended their electric lines into their ice fields in the Stuttgart area. At that time Mr. Couch helped the farmers by purchasing motors and extended them credit taking mortgages on their crop not only for the power furnished but for motors and of course along with the same time they got electrified their rice pumping they also got electricity in their homes. That is the beginning of the rural electrification in the state of Arkansas as we feel. Our program is on a statewide basis and the idea behind it was that the only way Arkansas was going to develop was for the individual communities and rural areas within the state to get together to develop themselves rather than to have somebody else come in and do it. In order to foster that idea we put on this community contest within the incorporated towns and at the same time we worked as Mr. Ritchie told you very extensively in the rural areas. We put on a balanced farming contest to raise the economic level and at the same time we took care of the social aspects of the rural situation by putting on what we call a rural community improvement program the idea of which was to get the rural people to band together to better their living conditions by having better community facilities. It was like a circle that turns always back upon itself more and cheaper power creates a market for more appliances and this means a need for more power I found myself faced with the ancient riddle of the priority of the chicken or the egg. It was Mr. Ritchie again who told me how each affects the other the subtle interchange that gives momentum to this 20th century Renaissance. Every day there's more and more uses being developed for the use of electricity the kilowatt hour consumption for for customers increasing each year as the customer adds on more electrical devices. Our field is pretty well limited to that in the future that is a going out and explaining to the rural people how they can use labor saving devices operated by electricity and save man power cost of electricity has gone down. We've had two rate reductions in the last 15 years one in 1941 and one in 1944 while the price of everything else has gone up since World War two started the cost of electricity has continued down and as we see today we're going to do everything we know to keep from bringing about any increases and we feel that we will be able to continue to keep electricity is the cheapest thing in the household. And the final word a quick look at the future a future that holds no fears only promise here are the words of a revolution as surely as those of Washington or Hamilton. Mr. Kennedy again ending our interview on a note of triumph. Our weather down here is such that we're able to use an outdoor type of construction which enables us to save money in the building of our plant facilities. In 1940 we had a capacity of some ninety seven thousand kilowatts I was checking the figures the other day and at the present time our company alone had a total capacity of five hundred and eighty six thousand kilowatts in addition to that we have long term contractual obligations for a total of some two hundred and five thousand kilowatts it's been a phenomenal growth and we'll show you what's going on down here in this state it's going to continue just recently we were up in New York buying some eighteen million dollars worth of bonds for additional expansion and I expect we'll be back up there next year to see you. The ancient ones they say grew contemptuous of miracles because of long and close association so I found my wonder dulled by miracles made commonplace but there was one final marvel that would never cease to amaze it has a plunderous name underground gasification of coal it's a process whereby coal stored deep in the mines can be converted to gas and hence to energy without being brought to the surface without once seeing the sun that long ago gave it birth here's James elder who's a supervising engineer of the U.S. Bureau of Mines signed here at Gorgas Alabama Mr. Elder they tell me that you have a very interesting experiment going here and I wonder if you could tell me what it is yes we're working on the underground gasification of coal the Bureau of Mines and the Alabama Power Company have been cooperating in experimentation along these lines since 1946-47 our aim is to recover the energy of the coal without mining it and putting it to useful work now you know I'm a complete novice on this subject how can you mine coal without mining it I'm not mining it I mean it isn't necessary to bring the coal itself above ground let's bring the energy out instead of the coal itself and how do you go about doing that the latest methods that have been used at Gorgas include the drilling of holes from the surface to the coal bed spaced about a hundred and fifty feet apart an electrode is placed in the coal bed at each hole a current is passed between them the coal is fired by electricity changed into coke and fired by electricity and as the current passes through the coal coke is formed which is porous and permits the passage of air or other gases after we have carbonized a reasonable amount of coal underground we remove we remove the electric current and pass air in one of the holes and take gases out of the other one the air goes down to the coal bed reacts with the carbon forms carbon monoxide and hydrogen and comes out at the other end of the system the carbon monoxide and the hydrogen are largely responsible for the heating value of the gases which is another way of saying the energy of the coal bed to follow this story it was necessary to descend into a mine roll through I don't know how many winding caverns until it seemed I had reached the dwelling place of the cosmic fires that they say still burn as on the first cataclysmic day of the formation of the world Gorgas Alabama a huge hole like some gaping mouth loomed up before us here was the final miracle but if you would observe this miracle you must follow a road that winds out of sunlight into darkness we're riding down now into the coal mine and Gorgas Alabama we're riding in something they call a Jeep it looks more to me like a roller coaster it's a flat little railroad trolley seven of us sitting in the Jeep Hal Snider with his light on and his tin helmet a pair of blue overalls that they gave me cocky overalls for some reason that I don't understand we've had a little lecture before we go down we've been told that mines are not dangerous but they are confining and a lot of heavy equipment moves around in them in a narrow space therefore each one of us has been assigned one of the mine supervisors we had to stay with him lights on in the helmets now we're going down the trolley into the Gorgas coal mine off deciding we go now onto the single track that leads down into the mine it's a very low entrance everyone keeps his head down pitch darkness ahead of us except for a narrow ring of lights single line of lights looks like a necklace a necklace of gold on a black velvet dress and now we're down in the mine where the actual extraction of coal is taking place how I take it that is the continuous miner I've been hearing about yes the machine directly ahead there that's doing the actual mining of the coal is a continuous miner how does that work help as you see there are six cutting chains which literally rip out the coal with the teeth of the chains they toss it back on to a conveyor which carries it back over the length of the mining machine and dumps it into a what we call a shuttle car hell how many men are working this the continuous color we have six on this section there's six men on this one machine on all of the machines that you see here that in can that includes the continuous miner a loader which operates directly behind the miner cleaning up and the two shuttle cars well how about the miner itself how many men does that take it takes two and about how much do they cut a day they will mine over 300 tons a day and how many men would have been taken in the old days to get that much coal well probably 70 men in other words then hell here two men and this machine do as much work as 70 men used to do in the oldest yes along with the other four men who helped them get the coal on out how long have you been using this help since January of 1950 we got our first one at that date we've since added five more what's that done to the output of the mines do you have any figures on that well it has doubled the output for the mine and we do it much more safely I want to like to add that point because in using the continuous miner no explosives are used to blast the coal and in the result we don't affect the roof as we did in the old days when we drilled and blasted well that makes me think how another thing I don't see any props for this tip in other words we're just sitting here in a cavern of rock and that seems to be the old days they would have wooden props in there in the old days we did use wooden props but nowadays we support the roof by bolting it up a hole is drilled about four feet deep and a bolt is placed in the hole with an expanding tight bolt and by fastening the bolt up tight against the roof the roof is supported without the use of the timbers another thing hell it's cool down here it was warm when we came in it's cool here how do you keep it this way and I might say to the air is sweet that we keep it cool by forcing ventilation currents through the mines with the use of a large fan that you saw as we entered the pit mound well this is a modern mine all right hell where did you study because you must have studied to get this job at the University of Kentucky Mining Engineering yeah thanks a lot help there's been the greatest awakening in the people a desire to really improve their own conditions and do it in their own way to take what they've got and to build it into whatever it's possible to be built into to take their own local know-how and own local capital and own own local labor and process their own raw resources into the finished product largely for their own market and it's been a non-usual job of that done in this mid-south area one final voice see Hamilton Moses chairman of the board of the Arkansas power and light company here is the cause and the effect the beginning and the end tell us mr. Moses what brought about these changes that we have seen well an awakening of the people very largely because of the leadership and in the three states particularly in Arkansas there's been a statewide business organization called the Arkansas Economic Council that was organized in 1942 to go out and get the people to do whatever it is that communities and people can do just let me give you a few instances I take our power cup and his plant to prosper campaign we went out and by given prizes got a large number of the farmers way out in rural sections of Arkansas to enter into a contest to see as to who could do the best job and budgeted himself building a better economy on the farm building better homes a better place for his people in the rural folks to live and the first year 15,000 different farm families entered into that contest it's one quite a bit of recognition out over the country and it's been done in a number of places another thing was rural electrification I doubt if there's anything that's happened in our area that's given the people more hope and put a little bit more zest into the life of the rural folks and rural electrification and by the way you'll be surprised to know that our state in Arkansas is right at the tops in rural electrification and that's been accomplished very largely since the war our company the Arkansas Power and Light to purge size and per number of customers is carried more lights to farmhouses than the other private utility in America and our 18 rural electric cooperatives have done the first-class job in an Arkansas now is what you can call 90% rural electrified it sounds to me Mr. Moses as though here what you're doing is building spiritually pretty much we were finding the physical changes they were changing their cattle or they're improving their soil and here you're improving the spirit well Mr. Cassidy I believe that's correct and I believe that our experience down there has taught us that the number one you've got to go out and lead the people into a better spirit and into a better frame of mind so they'll go out and build better places and better communities in which to live before you can do any too much in building industrially and physically we found that there's thousands of concerns all over this nation especially in the north and east looking for new places to go and new homes for their people and a little bit more sunshine and climate but they had a hard time finding it and it led us to the conclusion that our first job was to go out and get our people organized to build better communities in which to live and build more inviting rural life and community life down there that when we did that concerns all over the nation would come and look it up and we believe that's proven true now this was the miracle that we found this the revolution born of cosmic things deep in the womb of the earth trace its path in power lines that stretch across the hills measure it in ancient roads repaved now and lighted you can see a part of it each time a dynamo turns or a generator hums with energy you can hear it in the triumphant voices a hand moves across a dial night comes but the darkness is beaten back in a thousand places wheels too big for turning move as though a thousand men were lending the strength of their arms and backs this is the weapon of the revolution that has come to this land this is the power and the you've been listening to the power and the prize the eighth in a series heritage over the land describing the changes that have lately come to the American sound this series is written and directed by William Allen Bayles and produced by miss Lee F. Payton it is anticipated that future series will deal with developments in other sections of the country next week the story of petrochemicals