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<br />(;iIbert F. White <br /> <br />----------'~_.~._.__.~_._-- <br /> <br />A: Yes. <br /> <br />Q: Okay. You got your data on the 10wl:r Mississippi partly from the Corps and <br />then you came back to Washington and drafted a report? <br /> <br />A: It was an iterative process of preparing a report which the committee finally <br />produced under the chairmanship of Morris L. Cooke, who had been <br />designated by the President for this committee under Ickes. <br /> <br />Q: And what did the report finally say? <br /> <br />A: The report recommended a whole series of policies and projects for the <br />Mississippi Valley. At the time, I did not realize fully that a part of the <br />hidden agenda for the report was Morris Cooke's deep personal concern for <br />nlral electrification. Some of us on the staff were surprised that so much <br />attention was given to information of a statistical and gr-1phical sort about the <br />lack of electrification on farms in the United States and the Mississippi <br />Valley. <br /> <br />One of the outcomes of submitting the report was the establishment of the <br />Rural Electrification Administration, and one of the men whom Cooke had <br />brought in with him to serve on the committee-Harlow Person--and his <br />assistants, E.J. Coil, S.P. Langhoff, and Perry Taylor, immediately went into <br />setting up the new Rural Electrification Administration, <br /> <br />From this I learned that there are skill ful people who take a public assignment <br />of this sort, pick out one or two practicable outcomes, and then focus on <br />those. In this case, Cooke focused on establishing REA. The other members <br />of the Mississippi Valley Committee weren't interested in REA but they <br />cooperated in getting out a report which ena.bled Cooke to persuade Roosevelt <br />to establish the administration. Some of the members of the committee, I <br />know, felt a little disappointed because Cooke didn't spend mLlch time trying <br />to push their other recommendations. <br /> <br />Q: Well, this report comes at a time when there was still a great dez.l of <br />controversy over the single-purpose versus multi-purpose approach to river <br />development. And, as you know, there were many people in the Corps who <br />still considered that navigation ought to be the primary goal of federal <br /> <br />9 <br />