POWERGRAMS

March 1914 with British financier, Mackey Edgar of Sperling & Co. Edgar accepted the challenge of raising $30 million for Alabama Power investments, specifically for a nitrate plant at Muscle Shoals and the electricity to operate it. The next year, Mitchell booked passage on the Lusitania, which was sailing from New York on May 1, 1915. When the luxury liner was sunk by a German sub, Mitchell's name appeared in The London Times among those who were dead. His wife, Carolyn, in London was distraught. However, Mitchell did not board the ship in New York City because of the death of his nephew, Nathaniel Tileston, on April 7, 1915. Tileston was electrocuted when he fell from a pole while working at Gadsden Steam Plant. Mitchell elected to meet the inbound train in New York to escort his nephew's body to Mitchell's sister in Massachusetts. The sinking of the Lusitania, as well as other unarmed U.S. ships, shocked Americans. The acts of sabotage by German agents, such as blowing up the New Jersey Black Tom munitions plant in 1916 and encouraging strikes at plants, caused a backlash against Germany. Alabama Power's leadership understood that U.S. defensive preparations were creating an economic boom, and the company was positioned to supply the future electric demands that Alabama and its people needed. Congress passed the National Defense Act in June 1916 to increase the strength of the U.S. military. The government began coordinating industry and defense through the Council of National Defense. The act included $20 million to build two government plants that would produce nitrates. After a sometimes heated national competition for the plants, Alabama Sens. Oscar Underwood of Birmingham and John Bankhead of Jasper managed to leverage their clout to see that the plants were located at Muscle Shoals near the Tennessee River. Although the Alabama senators never saw eye to eye with Alabama Power executives and often opposed the company, they supported Tom Martin in securing Muscle Shoals for the nitrate plant. At the time, Alabama Power owned two dam sites there (where Wilson and Wheeler Dams were eventually built). The hydroelectric power from the dam that Mitchell and Alabama Power intended to construct at Muscle Shoals would power nitrate and fertilizer production. But the provocation that pushed the U.S. into the European war had nothing to do with nitrates. It was the publication of a cable from Germany's foreign minister to the Mexican government. The "Zimmerman Note" promised Mexico if it supported Germany, lands lost to the U.S. in the Mexican-American War (1846– 1848) would be returned to Mexico. Americans, especially those living in south Texas, Utah, New Mexico and Nevada, immediately supported war with Germany. In the presidential election, President Wilson presented a neutrality platform but he could not withstand the American pressure for war. On April 2, 1917, just weeks after his second inauguration, Wilson stood "pale and erect" before a joint session of Congress and requested a declaration of war against Germany. On Good Friday, April 6, Congress responded and the U.S. was at war. The first unit of Alabama Power's newly constructed and state-of-the- art Warrior Reserve Steam Plant went into service four months later. It was impossible to build the Muscle Shoals Dam soon enough to provide electricity, so workers ran a transmission line due north from the Walker County plant to provide electricity for the construction of the government nitrate plants. Alabama Power also allowed the government to install a generator at Gorgas. Birmingham industries were turning out iron and steel for war products. U.S. Steel's TCI Fairfield Works converted the Ensley plant to cast steel ingots for ships and constructed a large shipyard in Mobile. The federal government completed the dam and Lock 17 on the Black Warrior River in 1915 in time for barges to carry raw materials from Birmingham Port to Mobile. The U.S. Army increased its force at Anniston's Fort McClellan. The Alabama National Guard had been mobilized and federalized in June 1916, as part of a 15,000-man Army force and 156,000 National Guardsmen sent to Mexico to capture Pancho Villa, who had been raiding U.S. territory. It was not long before these soldiers were training for duty in France. Nimrod Frazer's award-winning book, "Send the Alabamians: World War I Fighters in the Rainbow Division" (2014), recounts how one group of Alabama soldiers helped turn the tide for the Allied victory. The title comes from a remark by Gen. Edward Plummer, who commanded them during early days of their service: "In time of war, send me all the Alabamians you can get, but in time of peace, for Lord's sake, send them to somebody else!" The spirited ferocity of these young men in peacetime made them fierce soldiers on the battlefield. The European war that the United States entered in 1917 was the first modern war, with near total mobilization of society attempted. The terrible maiming and the large number of deaths from the battlefields were increased by new weapons — lightweight and efficient machine guns, poison gas, the tank and the airplane made their first appearances. Despite the tragedy of so many American deaths, the war gave a boost to the U.S. economy and ushered in a prosperity that culminated in the "Roaring Twenties," when Alabama Power, other American companies and the American people prospered into the Jazz Age. by Leah Rawls Atkins 40

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