"mess." Raver faced the many and continuing challenges of reorganization, conducting studies, building facilities, quadrupling the BPA work force, formulating power marketing policies, and tying BPA firmly to the war effort. As a World War I veteran wounded in action Raver took the threat of war very seriously.

He was with the Bonneville Project, later BPA, from September 15, 1939 to January 14, 1954. The longevity of his term was one of the factors that enabled Raver to make his imprint on the BPA policy and program. He served under three Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower- and four Secretaries of the Interior- Ickes, Julius Krug, Oscar Chapman and Douglas McKay.

Most of the 30 Federal hydroelectric projects in the Pacific Northwest were authorized during the Raver era. His was an age of hydro development.

Ross had leaned toward a minimum staff, including a few friends on temporary loan from Seattle City Light whose loyalty remained with Seattle. He organized a construction force of 700 by mid-1939.

Raver recruited a new strong top staff whose primary allegiance would be to BPA. He selected for chief engineer Sol Schultz, who had worked with him on the 1938 investigation of TVA. Raver brought D. Loring Marlett from Chicago, first as technical assistant, then comptroller, and eventually as assistant administrator when Gendron left. Earl Ostrander was chief accountant and later comptroller. Barclay Sickler headed rates and statistics; Dr. William Dittmer, power management, and Warren Marple, rural electrification. Marks was replaced as General Counsel by Hart, then successively C. Girard Davidson, Robert R. Willard, and Norman Stroll. One of Raver's administrative orders in October 1939 established the top staff as the staff advisory council. It was strengthened in 1943 as the executive committee with Roy Bessey as Secretary. Its minutes record policies considered.

Davis' history of BPA (1943) chronicles the enormous challenges and endless details faced by Raver and his staff. A more definitive official record appears in the lengthy BPA annual reports for fiscal years 1939 and 1940. By contrast, the annual reports for 1941, 1942, 1943, and 1944 were brief due to the paper conservation program.

The 1939 and 1940 annual reports each include staff organization charts and an explanation of the evolution of the administrative structure for handling power sales, operation of completed transmission and substation facilities, procurement, accounting, and the myriad details of the construction program. The crash construction pro

gram, largely defense-oriented, necessitated increasing the BPA staff to 2,421 by mid-1940, 3,189 by mid-1941 and a peak of more than 4,000 in 1942. Although BPA was then on a 44-hour work week, weekend and night work was common to meet defense plant deadlines. Evolution of the BPA organization from 1937 to 1947 is detailed in Roger L. Conkling's masters' degree thesis. In 1944 Lillian Davis compiled the report, The Bonneville Power Administration and the War.

Hitler's blitzkreig of Poland in September 1939 set the stage for a war economy. President Roosevelt declared a limited national emergency September 8, and therewith the Nation entered the 2-year transition to war. This resulted in accelerating the BPA program:

"The impact of the war on the Bonneville Power Administration has had one preponderant result. It has telescoped more than 10 years of normal growth into a brief 5 years... transmission system which has grown from no miles of lines in 1939 to 2,500 circuit miles in 1944 ... generators which have grown from less than 100,000 kW capacity in 1939 to 1,350,000 kW in 1944." (The BPA and the War, 1944)

Raver signed the first contract to supply power to the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) for a plant at Vancouver, Washington, December 20, 1939. The initial contract for 32,500 kW soon was increased to 182,500 kW. Many aluminum and other war-oriented industrial contracts followed in the next three years. Industrial loads for war production totaled 899,920 kW and accounted for 92 percent of BPA commitments as of June 30, 1942.

BPA's role evolved against a background of frustration in Washington, D.C. President Roosevelt's National Defense Power Committee, chaired by Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson, could not reach agreement with private utilities to increase the power supply. On the advice of Ickes, the frustrated President established the National Power Policy and Defense Committee in October 1939, with Ickes as chairman. Other committee members viewed the shift as an Ickes power grab.

To minimize the bickering, Roosevelt instructed the FPC on June 14, 1940 to prepare a defense power plan. The July 16, 1941 FPC report provided for FPC to have final authority on power and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to finance plant expansion. Now Ickes was stung. He complained the FPC approach would destroy the New Deal power program. When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on December 7, Roosevelt adopted the FPC plan. Within 3 weeks the Edison Electric Institute reported a nationwide

power shortage. Reviewing the floundering of 1938-1941 Funigiello in his book concluded, "the Nation entered World War II with its power system ill-prepared to meet the demands made upon it."

Meanwhile the events of 1940 had shocked the nation. Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway early that year, entered Holland May 10, Belgium May 16, and took France June 22. The British barely escaped at Dunkirk. Congress agreed to Roosevelt's May 16, 1940 request to increase U.S. production to 50,000 aircraft per year. This required increased aluminum production. The $5 billion Defense Appropriation Act approved in June led to 500 million dollars in defense contracts for Oregon and Washington.

A minor event was the Secretary of the Interior's approval in January 1940 for the Bonneville Project to be renamed Bonneville Power Administration and the Administrator the Bonneville Power Administrator. Together with the August 1940 approval of Grand Coulee power marketing, the new name enabled BPA to prepare for a regionwide role.

BPA's search for identity was not helped by the Portland vote against creating a city-owned electric system in 1940. Spokane also turned down municipal ownership. Raver did note in 1939 and 1940 annual reports the progress of PUD efforts to acquire electric distribution systems, and the successful formation of rural electric cooperatives.

But regional grass roots fervor for public ownership had slowed. The preoccupation with national defense stalemated the public power movement for the duration. BPA adjusted by emphasizing its role in the national defense effort. BPA did continue, however, to build customer service facilities to provide power to new systems that were ready to receive power. Others existed only on paper throughout the war. BPA received less than 10 percent of its revenue in 1945 from public and cooperative systems and three-fourths of that was from Seattle and Tacoma. The War hindered the formation and progress of public power systems and cooperatives.

A major event in 1940 was issuance of Executive Order 8526 directing BPA to market the Grand Coulee power output. It enabled BPA to enter into contracts in anticipation of large amounts of prime power from Coulee generators. It also set the stage for BPA to market power from future hydroelectric projects in the region.

There were some legislative efforts to enable BPA to follow the TVA pattern of serving as a broker in acquiring local private electric systems. A joint committee of Congress held hearings on a proposed Columbia Power Admin

istration June 13-19, 1942. The bill did not pass, in part because Ickes opposed a board of directors for BPA.

BPA was able, however, to facilitiate the acquisition of several small private utilities in the lower Columbia River area of Washington and Oregon, and construct transmission lines and substations to serve them. BPA developed customer service policies, standard power sales contracts, wholesale rates, and recommended resale rates. During the prewar and war years BPA aided in formation of rural electric cooperatives, largely on paper, and assisted in distribution system studies so these systems were in position to obtain Rural Electrification Act loans immediately after the war.

BPA's industrial site surveys and county economic surveys of future power needs were especially valuable. Industrial surveys enabled the Defense Plants Corporation to locate new electrometal and electrochemical plants in the region, including the "mystery load" in 1943 on the large Atomic Energy Commission Hanford Reservation, at Richland, Washington.

For several years BPA was, in effect, a regional chamber of commerce bringing war-oriented defense loads to the Pacific Northwest. The large plants generally were served directly by BPA, but many smaller loads were also added to the lines of local distribution systems.

The larger utilities were studied extensively to facilitate interconnections, exchange agreements, and encouragement of regionwide power pooling. The Northwest Power Pool commenced operation August 1, 1942, partly due to the War Production Board's limitations Order L-94 of May 1, but mainly because of BPA studies. Timing was providential; West coast rivers, other than the Columbia, registered the lowest streamflow in 54 years that autumn. Although this placed a heavy burden on BPA, a power shortage was averted.

Meanwhile, BPA had exerted considerable influence toward speeding generator installation schedules at Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams. The 1939 BPA Annual Report had called for 833,400 kW to be on line by July 1944 for normal peacetime load growth. BPA had issued its first 6-year Advance Program for fiscal years 1942-1947 in the fall of 1940. The 1940 BPA annual report called for all 10 Bonneville generators to be on line July 1944 at 518,000 kW, plus six Coulee units and four more Coulee units by January 1948.

After passage of the Lend Lease Act of March 11, 1941, BPA issued a revised Advance Program in May 1941 and a month later revised it again to respond to war requirements for aluminum and magnesium. Briefly, it required that the 1948 generator schedule be advanced to 1945. As stated in the fourth BPA annual report, "capacity could be made available as fast as generators could be manufactured and installed" (p. 60). A table (p. 65) showed all Bonneville units on line December 1943 plus 15 Coulee units by March 1945 a total of 2,138,400 kW. BPA also urged the start of McNary Dam.

The War Production Board strategy, however, emphasized increasing national productive capacity during 1942, and then devoting material priorities to actual production. This strategy allowed Bonneville Dam to be completed in