“It’s bad enough that people don’t understand our banking and monetary systems. If you understand, I believe there will be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
– Henry Ford
“Now we have the Swampers in Muscle Shoals.”
– Leonard Skynyrd
big big dream
“I will employ one million workers in Muscle Shoals and build a city 75 miles long.”
This was Henry Ford’s harsh declaration after a trip to a northern Alabama town with his friend Thomas Edison in 1921. One can only guess about the dreamy discussions the two men had on the picturesque left bank of the Tennessee River that inspired this grand plan.
At the time, the town of Muscle Shoals was not incorporated until 1923 and had fewer than 750 residents. And within those limits there were still cotton fields. Likewise, shallow water areas were Cherokee hunting grounds until two generations ago.
Nonetheless, Ford saw an opportunity with the pioneering Edison. In fact, Ford’s dream was to transform the sleepy town into a southern mecca. “Detroit of the South.”
Of course, this was a time when Detroit was prosperous and its citizens enjoyed an affluent standard of living. But Ford’s dream for Muscle Shoals focused on fertilizer manufacturing. It’s not car manufacturing.
To understand the opportunity Ford envisioned, one must understand the actions President Woodrow Wilson took in the region during World War I. In particular, construction of Wilson Dam and the two nitrate facilities began at the end of World War I.
The purpose of these facilities was to provide manufacturing of military supplies. However, the war ended before it was completed. Then President Warren G. Harding proposed halting work and selling or leasing the facility.
Ford saw this as a golden opportunity. He offered the government $5 million in 100-year leases for the incomplete nitrate facility and Wilson Dam (projects in which the government has already invested more than $46 million). As part of the proposal, Ford promised to complete the facility and build another dam. Upstream.
Ford planned to lower agricultural costs nationwide by converting nitrate plants to produce fertilizer. He also sought to apply his unique ideas to urban planning and design. article Scientific AmericanPublished in September 1922, he noted his unique vision:
“The ‘75 Mile City’ will allow Mr. Ford to operate both a factory and a farm.”
The concept was to build a community in a thin strip of outer city. Thus, factory workers could enjoy the benefits of rural life along with the conveniences of city life.
Rushing towards the muscle swarm
The Scientific American article suggested a fictitious fertilizer factory worker who spent his off-hours buying cheap nitrate fertilizers from his private farm and collective farm equipment rented from the factory.
The city itself was envisioned as a loose spread of factories and urban areas separated by these farm houses. In addition, all power would be provided by cheap hydroelectric power provided by the Wilson Dam and subsequent dams.
By 1921, Ford’s ideas were so powerful that people flocked to the city from all over the United States. The New York Times published a series of articles. article In early 1922, one of them continued with the following sentence:
“It’s a dream city where Henry Ford suddenly grew up in Muscle Shoals sometime after the fashion for Aladdin with his fancy lamp had already caught on.”
In fact, the plan was popular in the South. If implemented, this large-scale project would transform an extremely poor rural area into an industrial hub.
Speculators with high hopes began purchasing land to create subdivisions. Sidewalks were built and orchards and farms were planted in southern Alabama to meet the population boom expected to arrive in northern Alabama.
Ninon Parker, marketing director for the Colbert County Tourism and Convention Bureau, points out that relics of stimulating development can still be observed.
“There are still some things to see in the evolution of that boom. There are a few houses, curbs and fire plugs that once ran straight through the cotton fields, and the old Howell and Graves school. “There was quite a bit of pressure for people to come here.”
Alas, the explosion in population and wealth never occurred. Some lawmakers scoffed at Ford’s $5 million offer. And Nebraska Senator George Norris, who had plans of his own, began the fight to keep the dam as federal property.
The House of Representatives strongly approved the sale to Ford. But Norris blocked it in the Senate. And Ford’s dream city died before it was born.
Big, big hit
By 1924, Ford realized he was in a no-win situation and withdrew his offer.
Local residents were angry. They accused the federal government of ruining their future. Norris also received death threats from people outraged by his interference. These people believed Ford would make them rich.
To this day, Muscle Shoals remains a seedy town of about 13,000 residents (5,000 fewer than at its peak at the time of Wilson Dam construction). There are still streets and roads named for Ford, Edison and other Detroiters, as well as remnants of Ford.
But Ford’s dream city is no longer the famous city of Muscle Shoals. Decades later, this small-town city became famous for its blockbuster hit.
In 1961, Rick Hall took out a loan to purchase an abandoned brick warehouse in Muscle Shoals to build a recording studio. That’s where legends were born and magic ensued.
Hall’s keen ear and his homegrown studio band, The Swampers, soon established Muscle Shoals’ following. “The hit album capital of the world.” Their extraordinary talent and unique sound shaped the landscape of popular R&B, rock, soul, and county music of the 1960s and beyond.
Hall and The Swampers provided the musical foundation for numerous hits by iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Duane Allman, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, and many more. These studio musicians and their “Muscle Shoals Sound” have spawned more than 500 recordings and 75 gold and platinum hits.
Not bad for a low-rise recording studio on the north bank of the Tennessee River in Alabama.
This proves that you never know how something will turn out. Perhaps it was for the best that Ford’s grand plans for Muscle Shoals were halted before they ever really began.
Such changes could have destroyed the natural beauty of the area. And like Detroit, it could have been a desolate hellscape by the early 21st century.
Accomplish the dream
Norris’s intentions were partially realized later, after Ford disappeared. In 1926, Norris introduced a bill outlining a plan for the federal government to complete and operate Wilson Dam.
But that wasn’t the whole bill. It also included proposals to build more dams along the Tennessee River.
By 1931, Congress had agreed to a bill called the “Shoals Bill,” which gave the federal government the authority to continue to manage sections of the Tennessee River. However, President Herbert Hoover vetoed the bill and the idea was temporarily shelved.
Then, in 1933, during the height of the Great Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the bill was finally passed.
The goal was to provide navigation, flood control, power generation, fertilizer manufacturing, regional planning, and economic development for the Tennessee Valley. This established the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation’s largest public electric utility and a federally owned, non-profit corporation.
TVA was envisioned as an electric utility and regional economic development agency that would help modernize the region’s economy and society. Later it developed into primarily an electric utility.
TVA is an American corporate agency. It receives no taxpayer funding and derives almost all of its income from electricity sales.
But that’s because TVA is a federally owned, non-profit corporation. That doesn’t mean it’s not profitable. It’s actually very profitable. TVA provides annual operating revenues of approximately $12 billion, with annual net income of between $500 million and $1.1 billion.
Because TVA is federally owned, it is not traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In other words, there is no way for individual investors to purchase stocks. But the business model of earning income through monthly utility payments has been replicated by other publicly traded utilities across the country.
Dreamed up by Henry Ford, these cash cow businesses generate reliable revenue streams, pay large dividends, and help preserve investor capital during periods of stock market volatility.
For this reason, we recently looked for the best utility stocks we could find on the market and included them in the March issue of Wealth Prism Letter. Paid subscribers are already living the dream of diverting other people’s utility bill payments into their own pockets.
And if it appeals to you, you can Accomplish the dream do.
thank you,
minnesota gordon
for economic prism
From realizing dreams to returning to the economic prism
