OCR Text |
Show LAST LEGISLATIVE FIGHT 273 development have been and are being used as the initial step in the socialization of natural resources industries." The attitude of the Bureau was amply described by I. J. Matthews, a Straus lieutenant who managed the Bureau's North Platte River projects. "It is the duty of the Bureau of Reclamation," he proclaimed,396 "to carry out the policies of the administration in power, and it is a part of the socialistic program of the present administration in power to give electricity to consumers at cost, and as a part of the administration's socialistic program the Bureau must reduce the rates charged for North Platte power to carry out the government's social- istic program." The Saturday Evening Post in an article about Straus called him "our most arrogant bureaucrat." 397 In the Topeka, Kansas, Capital an editorial stated that the Bureau "holds an iron-clad monopoly of basic resources in many parts of the country. It is fighting tooth and nail to extend that monopoly . . . it is a powerful force working for the socialization of the electric in- dustry. It is an example of the way free nations are undermined from within." 398 The St. Augustine, Flor- ida, Record, thought the Bureau "an example of the way dictatorship is created and freedoms banished, one by one. It is an insult to the American tradition." 399 A California court decision caused widespread com- ment, and many stories about it were printed in the nation's press. More than any previous incident, it revealed the diabolical schemes of the Reclamation Bureau. Moreover, it brought judicial condemnation of them for the first time, and illustrated forcefully their significance and their threat to a free economy and democratic principles. |