Feud

For bringing millions of Government dollars into his State, Tennessee's aging, knob-nosed, spoils-loving Senator Kenneth Douglas McKellar loves TVA. But he hates TVA's hard-working Director David E. Lilienthal. Last week, torn between love and hate, he turned his Valley grudge into a mountain feud.

McKellar, premier Senate spoilsman, had once envisioned TVA as a wonderful new Tennessee source of political jobs-- something juicier than marshalcies and postmasterships. Lilienthal refused to cut the melon. McKellar bided his time.

Last winter, after Pearl Harbor, the old Senator saw his chance. Lilienthal had decided to build Douglas Dam, on the French Broad River near Knoxville, to get another 100,000 kw. of power for aluminum expansion in a hurry. When McKellar saw that the land that would be flooded was 12,000 acres owned mostly by influential canning interests, who were his friends, he balked. Douglas Dam was blocked for two months.

Independent engineers agreed that Douglas Dam was needed; so did President Roosevelt, Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, everybody on SPAB. OPM's Bill Batt called the one-man fight against Douglas Dam an "irreparable blow to the national defense program"; McKel- lar's constituents bombarded him with angry letters. Finally he had to give in.

Last fortnight, using all his legislative skill, Senator McKellar tried to attach a dog collar for TVA to an appropriation bill: he wanted to abolish TVA's revolving fund and thus make it run to Congress --and McKellar--for every penny of its building funds. Debate in the Senate was hot and mean; McKellar got so enraged that he scrambled his facts, to the point of losing geographical track of the Tennessee River. Gentle old Senator George W. Norris, father of TVA, said flatly that McKellar's amendment would be "almost disastrous." Lilienthal said its effect would be to take TVA out of the war.

McKellar pounded his amendment through. But this week he faced another stiff fight in the House--and in waging his feud he had let his popularity in TVA-loving Tennessee scrape bottom. Said the Chattanooga Times: "If the whole thing could be forgotten and everyone could go on with the war, such adjustments as may be needed in the TVA system . . . can be made at a time when the Japanese and Germans are not at our throats."

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