MINERAL ORES AND WATER POWER 



can be woven with cotton into amazingly soft and beau- 

 tiful textiles. If you laminate aluminum sheets with 

 plastics and plywoods, you have a whole new series of 

 materials. What about aluminum shingles, lightweight, 

 fireproof, and insulating all at once? Aluminum freight 

 cars would save half the nation's freight bill. Aluminum 

 kitchen ware is familiar, but what about aluminum table- 

 ware, furniture, fountain pens, costume jewelry, or what 

 have you? We tumbled into bed that memorable eve- 

 ning at one a.m. to dream of the coming Thistledown 

 Age of American Civilization. 



Reynolds expects to keep all his war workers who 

 want to stay on the job, re-employ six thousand returned 

 veterans, and then hire some more. He is confident that 

 at the present price of fourteen cents a pound, there will 

 not be enough aluminum to go 'round and that every 

 penny shaved off this price by better techniques and 

 bigger output will send the demand zooming. 



"Well make more and more jobs," he declared em- 

 phatically, "by producing more and more aluminum. 

 What we are going to need is more and more electrical 

 power." 



That optimistic statement raises big questions. Power 

 is an asset as tangible as gold, and hydro-electric power 

 is one of the South's great natural resources. Hence the 

 Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest producer of 

 electrical power in the South, has enormous potentiali- 

 tiesfor or against Southern industry. Specifically, the 



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