Electric City , livre ebook

ALSO BY THOMAS HAGER
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Copyright 2021 Thomas Hager
Cover 2021 Abrams
Published in 2021 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944922
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4796-0
eISBN: 978-1-64700-044-8
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For the good friends who introduced me to the Shoals, Amit Roy and Taylor Pursell
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I Muscle Shoals
CHAPTER 1 Where the River Sings
CHAPTER 2 The Wonder City at War
CHAPTER 3 Uncle Henry
CHAPTER 4 $8 a Second
CHAPTER 5 Camping with the President
CHAPTER 6 Politics and Public Relations
CHAPTER 7 The Twin Wizards
CHAPTER 8 Roadblock
CHAPTER 9 President Henry Ford
PART II Boomtown
CHAPTER 10 Swampland and Whiskey
CHAPTER 11 A Party of One
CHAPTER 12 The 75-Mile City
CHAPTER 13 Gutters of Political Filth
CHAPTER 14 The Last Meeting
CHAPTER 15 Scandal
PART III TVA
CHAPTER 16 The Alabama Ghost
CHAPTER 17 A New Deal
CHAPTER 18 I m Goin to Die for the Government
CHAPTER 19 Electric Nation
CHAPTER 20 A Sign in the Sky
Epilogue
Source Notes
Sources
Acknowledgments
Index of Searchable Terms
INTRODUCTION
In December 1921, the richest man in the world and the greatest inventor in the world-the Twin Wizards, as the press called them, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison-opened the door of Ford s private railcar, emerged onto a rear platform, and announced the future. They were on a side track at an old wooden station in what many Americans would have considered the approximate middle of nowhere: the small town of Florence, Alabama. They were surrounded by thousands of local people, the biggest crowd anyone had seen in the area for years, the area s merchant elite and government officials in their best suits and fedoras jostling shoulder to shoulder with sharecroppers and farm families. The throng murmured expectantly, and reporters from fourteen newspapers and wire services pulled out their notebooks. Ford, looking dapper and full of energy, beamed at the crowd. He was no public speaker-had a high voice and tended to get tongue-tied before any audience larger than a few people-and he did little more than introduce his traveling companions. There were cheers when he introduced Thomas Edison to the crowd. There were cheers when he introduced his wife, Clara, and Edison s wife, Mina, and his son, Edsel, and Edsel s wife, Eleanor. The crowd would have likely cheered if he had introduced his private chef, who had just finished making them a light lunch.

The Twin Wizards: Ford and Edison in Florence, Alabama, 1921
He didn t need to tell the crowd much more, because they d been reading about his ideas for weeks in the newspapers. Right here in their town, in this region along the Tennessee River, Ford and Edison were going to create jobs, bring in money, and build a new city unlike anything on earth.
Ford had given additional details to reporters during the trip down from Detroit. He was planning to build a city ten times the size of Manhattan at a spot next door to Florence called Muscle Shoals. This city of the future was going to combine the technological power of a city with the wholesome natural beauty of the country, marrying the best parts of urban and rural life. It was going to be a city without slums or tenements or smoke-spewing factories, no soul-destroying urban rot-a green ribbon city of small centers stretching for seventy-five miles along the river tied together by fast, smooth highways. The whole thing was going to run on clean, renewable energy in the form of electricity generated by the river itself. He was going to build dozens of small factories. He was going to create jobs for a million workers.
All the workers would have the chance to live on a few acres of land, in touch with nature and farming, growing much of their own food. Using modern machinery, there was no reason they couldn t get the necessary farmwork done in two or three months, he told the reporters. The rest of the time, they would switch to blue-collar jobs in small, electrically powered factories, earning cash wages they could spend on cars, farm equipment, radios, labor-saving devices, and their kids educations.
And there was more. This new city-reporters were already calling it the Detroit of the South -would be built and financed in a new way that would help break the stranglehold that bankers and Wall Street fat cats had over America, and return economic power to people who actually worked for a living. The way Ford and Edison described it, the whole thing would be paid for with a new kind of currency they called energy dollars. It wouldn t cost the American taxpayers a nickel. It was going to be an American utopia that would attract workers from all over the nation, stimulate the southern economy, and spur a new national prosperity. It would help feed the world. It would even, Ford said, help put an end to war.
Behind his brief speech was a deep drive to bring the benefits of new technology to one of the poorest, least-developed parts of the nation. The new city was going to be the summation of everything the Twin Wizards believed: Ford s passion for machines and efficiency and Edison s single-minded dedication to improving lives through new technology. This would bring their careers to a resounding finale. The great electric city was going to be their masterpiece.
The crowd cheered wildly.
This is the story of the rise and fall of the great electric city, how it became one of the biggest news events of the Roaring Twenties, was the cause of 138 bills and a decade of attention in Congress, spurred an investment frenzy bigger than anything since the Klondike Gold Rush, changed the direction of urban planning around the world, and helped fuel a movement that came close to electing Henry Ford president of the United States.
It also tells how, after years of feverish effort, the whole thing came crashing down. One man, Senator George Norris-a name little known today but vitally important in American history-was responsible for opposing and derailing Ford s plans, and this is his story, too. Finally, it describes what emerged from the ashes of Ford s idea for an American utopia. The area around Florence, Alabama, is today green and prosperous, its economic status vastly improved, its way of life transformed. The book describes how that happened.
This is a story that highlights American optimism and innovation, a peculiarly American eagerness to try new things, create new systems, experiment with new ways of doing business, and adopt new ways of living. Along the way, it includes stories of some vivid and little-known historical characters-an array of dreamers, hucksters, politicians, and business titans-who wrestled for control over the future of a kingdom-size chunk of the American South. Their battles over the river were forerunners of many of the issues that consume us today: achieving the proper balance between ambition and altruism, industry and environment, modern life and traditional ways.
Most of the action takes place in the 1920s, a pivotal time when, thanks to helping win World War I, the United States was taking a new role in the world, changing from a primarily rural, agrarian nation-the beloved, mythical American democracy of independent, free-thinking farmers, Jefferson s America-to an increasingly urbanized, industrial, global powerhouse of factory workers, mass immigration, corporate trusts, and big money.
Ford and Edison wanted to gift the nation they loved with a titanic, living example of how they thought America should work. They were going to take the best parts of the past-the independent and freeliving individualism of the early farmers, idyllic living close to nature-and revive them with the benefits that future technology could offer-cleaner industries, faster transportation, and labor-saving devices. The results would be new kinds of cities, new ways of making things, new approaches to labor and leisure, and improved lives for everyone.
Their proposals set off a firestorm of reaction on Wall Street and in Congress, igniting controversies we re still dealing with today. Now, as then, much of America s political dialogue can be boiled down to what seems like a simple question: Should our decisions be directed by private businesses to boost the economy, or by government officials for the public good? The simple answer we keep coming up with is: both. That leads to endless pushing and pulling over priorities, old arguments over which should come first, business interests or The People, broadly defined. You can see it played out in every public issue, every election cycle. The tension between these two poles is a good thing, too. The arguments over who knows best what s good for the nation help propel and energize our brash, rough history as a nation; the rhythm of political discourse is in many ways the beating heart of America. All this was highlighted in new ways by t