Maybe it was '47, yeah. And then we tried to get more money allocated to
the black schools. But my big fight was the power company. The power
company was my big fight. One of the first things that I wanted to do,
well, I wanted to build roads, which we had to had a road program. We
had a bond issue, and we sold those bonds for less than 3%, 2.7%
interest. 'Course, I was for building the medical center, which I built.
But the rural electrification program was very close to my heart,
because I had lived in the country without electricity, and I knew what
it would mean to the farmers. So we were very strong for a rural
electrification program. Because of my relationship with Truman, we were
able to get Secretary of the Interior Wicker[?] to loan the coops money
to build the Ozark generating plant at Ozark, and of course, the power
companies opposed it. They were opposed to the rural electrification
program. They didn't want to got out into this area because at the time
it was not profitable, but
Page 10 they thought someday it
would be. They were against the whole water development program because
of the public power issue. They thought it was unfair competition and so
forth. So I had a running battle with Ham Moses over at the power
company all the time during my administration. When I was nominated in
August—in July—we were doing the run-off between me and Jack Holt, Ham
Moses came to see me at the Lafayette Hotel, and we had a visit, about
thirty minutes. And when he got ready to leave, he made a remark that
didn't register on me at the time. He was trying to decide which one of
us to support. The power company was a very powerful politically at that
time. He said, "Well, it doesn't make any difference which one of you is
elected, because you ain't going to get anything done anyway." We have a
constitutional amendment, passed in 1933, called the Fuqua Amendment,
which requires a three-fourths vote to increase any tax other than the
sales tax. And I learned that the power company had about all the
members of the senate who were lawyers on their payroll. And every
governor has had to fight that. The special interests, you know, hiring
these legislators and senators, and that has made it difficult to get a
progressive program through the legislature, see. Of course, we got the
loan for the Ozark steam generating plant, and the Public Service
Commission granted it. But the power company got it reversed, and it was
delayed, and I think maybe under the Faubus administration the Ozark
generating plant was completed. 'Course, Orville Faubus came to work for
me, first, as administrative assistant to talk to road delegations,
people
Page 11 coming down to get roads. We had about
twelve counties in the northern part of the state that didn't have a
single hard surface road. He was from that part of the state. He knew
these people., knew their language, how to talk to them and so forth. So
his first initial job was to visit with these people on these road
projects. Then when Orville Faubus was elected governor, we had a
falling out when he called out the troops to prevent the children from
going to Central High School.