Berry's Biggest

Of all the jobholders who rode into the national limelight on the coattails of the New Deal, few have shone more wonderfully than baldish, hairy-handed, big-talking Major George L. Berry. Since 1933 he has been a member o. the NRA's Labor Advisory Board of Cotton Textile and the NRA's Mediation Board for Steel & Coal, divisional NRA administrator, custodian of the NRA's bones after its demise, Co- ordinator for Industrial Cooperation, chairman of John L. Lewis' pro-Roosevelt Labor's Non-Partisan League, and finally junior U. S. Senator from Tennessee. Last week New Dealer Berry was engaged in giving the coattails that carried him to eminence a particularly audacious tug.

Even George Berry's enemies admit that everything about him is big. He has been president since 1907 of the International Printing Pressmen & Assistants' Union of North America (50,000 members). He owns the biggest color-label printing plant in the U. S., at Rogersville, Tenn., and outside Rogersville the biggest farm in the Southeast (30,000 acres). It was thus a foregone conclusion that when George Berry began buying up mineral leases among farmers in the area later flooded by the TVA's Norris Dam, the marble he was looking for would turn out to be remarkable. Last week before a three-man condemnation commission in Knoxville George Berry estimated that his marble, now largely under water, might be worth $3,000,000,000.

Major Berry began corralling mineral leases in the Tennessee Valley in 1932 with a Knoxville real-estate man named C. A. Harris as partner and W. H. Ford, a local promoter, as their agent. Ford continued to sign leases after President-elect Roosevelt first submitted his plan for a series of dams in the Tennessee Valley in substantially the form of the present TVA. Last of the 252 leases, each calling for a consideration of $1 and mostly providing for minimum royalties up to 25-c- an acre if mineral production was not begun within twelve months, was registered on March 24, 1933, two months before the TVA was sanctioned by Congress. Formed chiefly with Berry money, the Imperial Marble Co. has since been quarrying some marble each year, has sold in 1936-37 9,972 cubic feet at about $2.25 a foot. After the Norris Dam spread Norris Lake over part of their holdings, Imperial Marble continued to make shipments by boat over the lake to be delivered in Knoxville. These shipments, costing 21-c- a cubic foot more than overland shipments, figured prominently in Major Berry's first estimate that the TVA had damaged his mineral holdings by $1,633,000. the complaint he filed with TVA before he was appointed Senator this year.

Last week's condemnation board hearings were held at the insistence of TVA's scholarly Chairman Arthur E. Morgan to determine the value of the claims. Before they had progressed very far it was apparent that it looked to TVA attorneys as if the leases had been signed less for their mineral than for their litigation value. They announced their intention to show that Agent Ford had sold his one-quarter interest in the $3,000,000,000 leases to a Frankfort, Ky. racing stable owner named George Collins for $400.

When Senator Berry himself took the stand, TVA Lawyer Alvin Ziegler dramatically produced a sheaf of documents. These, presented to the three presiding commissioners, turned out to be powers of attorney issued by several farmers about the time the TVA act was passed to Partners Berry and Harris, authorizing them to act as their agents for a 50% commission in financial transactions with the Government.

Angrily denying that he had ever seen the "affidavits" and banging his fist in rage over Lawyer Ziegler's attempts to read into tne record an excerpt from a celebrated 1921 Pressmen's Union dispute in which he & the union directors were charged with misappropriating funds, Senator Berry cried: "Why don't you hit above the belt?"

"Were you hitting above the belt when you took those powers of attorney?" snapped Lawyer Ziegler.

Best defense of his character that George Berry could think of at the moment was to shout down: "I was once within three votes of being nominated Vice President of the U. S."

When Lawyer Ziegler went on to introduce leases changed in 1935 whereby 62 1/2% of claim proceeds went to the lessors, documents that bore the large Berry signature, Senator Berry had already left the hearings, explaining that his presence was necessary for Senate consideration of the Farm Bill.

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