"All Is Well"

Valet MacDuffy packed his bags, but President Roosevelt had plenty of things to do and people to see before leaving Washington last week for his inspection of the Tennessee Valley Authority and his annual autumn vacation in Georgia. When they were all done and seen he put on a powder-blue suit, drove to the Union Station, boarded his special train.

First real stop was the thriving little tobacco-market town of Harrodsburg, Ky. Forty thousand people massed to hear President Roosevelt speak from a replica of a log fort built by Daniel Boone, to hear him signalize Harrodsburg as the first permanent white settlement west of the Alleghenies. "We, too, are hewing out a commonwealth...which we hope will give to its people...the fulfillment of security, of freedom, of opportunity..." the President told an audience of "pioneers of 1934." He waved a little silk flag and seven girls pulled the veil off a huge stone frieze of pioneer figures which cost the Federal Government $100,000.

By mid-afternoon the President was at Coal Creek, Tenn., ready to begin inspection of his multimillion dollar social-planning ''yardstick.'' Over a new concrete highway he rode five miles up the Clinch River valley. Soon he was standing on a bluff above the Norris damsite. More than 300 ft. below, the clang of machinery could be heard as great buckets of concrete slid across a cable line, slopped into the dam's coffers.

Two years ago the President visited the spot with Senator George Norris, assured him that his Federal power dream was going to come true. Last week, with the dam a third completed, the President turned to TVA Chairman Arthur E. Morgan to exult: "It's great stuff, isn't it!" Dr. Morgan remarked that the lake behind the dam will have an 800-mi. shoreline. "If we start to rent cottage sites along the shoreline we'll make a fortune," joshed the President. Down the bluff they drove to see some workers, whom President Roosevelt addressed as future "veterans" in a "new kind of war--a war to improve the conditions of millions of our American people."

Next morning the Presidential party awakened in its Pullmans on the western side of Tennessee at Nashville. There was a short stop at the State Capitol grounds while Mrs. Roosevelt went up to lay a wreath on the tomb of one of her husband's predecessors, 11th President James Knox Polk. Thousands lined streets and roads as the party continued into the country to breakfast at the old home of 7th President Andrew Jackson.

Up the graceful "banjo'' drive to "The Hermitage" swept the President's car. He was led inside, had his attention called to the wallpaper given by Marquis de La Fayette, was seated at the head of Andrew Jackson's dining table for just the kind of breakfast that "Old Hickory'' relished. First came savory country sausages and fried apples with cinnamon, followed by a superb dish of turkey hash with beaten biscuits, hominy and eggs scrambled with browned cornmeal. The President was then taken outside for a view of the Jackson tomb. He also cocked an appreciative eye at the fine old stone springhouse, pouring its sparkling waters across the world's most abundant mint bed.

Nashville, to its inhabitants, is "the Athens of the South." So the President made the rounds of its schools. He saw Vanderbilt University and Ward-Belmont. At Fisk the famed Negro choir sang "Down by the Riverside" for him. At the request of Secret Service men, the George Peabody College for Teachers clipped its shrubbery back lest it conceal an assassin.

Next stop was Town Creek, Ala., and Joe Wheeler Dam. So full was the President of the TVA sights he had seen that by the time he reached Tupelo, Miss., he was moved to make an extemporaneous speech. Extolling the local citizenry for being the first to sign a contract for cheap TVA electricity for its municipal power system, the President observed:

"I can use you for a text--a text that may be useful to many other parts of the nation, because people's eyes are upon you....We recognize that there will be a certain amount of--what shall I say? --rugged opposition to this development, but I think we recognize also that this opposition is fading as the weeks and the months go by, fading in the light of practical experience....

"I am told that from March of this year, when you started using TVA power, the consumption of power for residential purposes has risen from 41,000 kilowatts to 89,000 kilowatts--an increase of 126%....It is a remarkable business success!

"All is well with the country," the President assured Tupelo, "and...we are coming back."

That afternoon at Birmingham, seat of rebellion against TVA, a crowd which jammed the railroad yards heard him call upon the populace, which voted solidly against public ownership of the city's light system year ago, to overrule "obstructionists, few in number in comparison with the whole population [who] are leaving no stone unturned to block and harass and to delay this great national program."

His duty done by TVA, the President leaned back in his chair as the train rolled him toward Warm Springs, a 40-lb. Thanksgiving turkey, baths in the healing waters and a two-week rest from Washington.

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