Roosevelt and the Tennessee Valley Authority

The flood control provided by the reservoirs TVA was building was a big help in itself, alleviating the erosion caused by spring floods. The Tennessee Valley Authority had to overcome a deep suspicion of government agencies and drill what were supposed revolutionary practices into the farmer’s traditional communities.  They accomplished this by blending in with the community.  For example, they would dress as farmers do, because the farmers would probably not take advice from someone dressed in a business suit.  The TVA people also found the leaders in the communities and convinced them that these new practices, such as crop rotation and fertilizers, was the way to restore the soil’s fertility.  Once they convinced the leaders, they were sure the rest would follow.    As topsoil erosion in the Tennessee Valley approached disastrous proportions, it became clear to the TVA that the problem was too big even for them to solve.  That’s when the TVA decided to have the farmers learn more about the soil, become scientists of the soil.  It was a tough task for the TVA to convince farmers that their old land management practices were a major source of their distress.  The TVA helped setup thousands of demonstration farms in the Tennessee Valley.  The U.S. Government even donated fertilizers to selected farmers who made changes in the way they used their land, such as crop rotation and letting their fields relax by growing just grass.  These farmers demonstrating with their land were required to show their neighbors what they were doing and the results as well.  

        One of the major schemes was established on the Tennessee River under the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933. Under this law the the Federal Government provided electric power to States, counties, municipalities and nonprofit cooperatives. With the power it was given authority to enter long term contracts for the sale of power to government agencies and even private entities.  It could also construct electric power transmission lines to areas not otherwise supplied, and establish rules and regulations for electricity retailing and distribution.  The TVA was both supplier and regulator.  The TVA’s success was remarkable.  By 1943, 19 states outside the Tennessee Valley had used the demonstration farm method of erosion control.

A significant element in the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority was the establishment of a regional authority, which would transcend state lines.  In taking this action Congress showed an awareness of the growing trend toward regional and national planning and an understanding of the fact that the States alone could not solve many of the problems of the Tennessee Valley.

As long as there had been people in the Tennessee Valley, fatal diseases had flourished along the waterways.  Smallpox, typhoid, and even malaria from annual swarms of mosquitoes kept the area in disarray.  There was no actual vaccine for malaria, but the TVA successfully reduced the Valley’s mosquito population.  There were vaccines for smallpox and typhoid, but many of the southerners didn’t receive them.  The TVA setup a voluntary vaccination program for its workers; however, they had to pay for the shots as the original plan didn’t pay for the vaccinations.  Soon all TVA employees were required to get typhoid and smallpox shots.  The decisive action the TVA had taken to protect their employees didn’t come too soon, for three months later the disease broke out in the middle of Tennessee.  The once common and deadly became rare in the Tennessee Valley.  As the TVA had taken out flooding and erosion, they had done the same with diseases.  

The TVA always held a high concern for one of its most valuable assets, its people.  There is an interesting story of Erastus R. Lindamood, and the perpetual fire in the hearth of his home.  It’s said that Erastus’s father, Isaac, had started the family fire in Virginia before the Civil War.  Somehow, when he moved to Tennessee in 1859, Isaac Lindamood carried the fire with him.  It burned since then, all the way to the creations of the hydroelectric dams.  When TVA representatives told him he would have to leave his home to make way, Erastus Lindamood didn’t resist as much as some of his neighbors.  The TVA used an invention called a ‘chunk box’ that would allow Lindamood to carry his perpetual fire to his new home located elsewhere in the Valley.  The ‘chunk box’ was basically a fireproof, tin container.  It made him famous in the Tennessee Valley as the man with the eternal fire, and also showed to the public that the TVA did care.

        A three-person board of directors governs the Tennessee Valley Authority.  The board included Arthur Morgan, Harcourt Morgan and David Lilienthal.  Arthur Morgan, the former president of Antioch College, was an advocate of social planning who saw in TVA an opportunity to build a relationship between government and business.  He wanted to keep rates at a comparative level to avoid alienating and infuriating private industry.  He believed the higher purpose of the TVA was to eliminate poverty in the Tennessee Valley, as well as to serve as a model for national regional planning.  Harcourt Morgan, the only southerner on the board, was an advocate for southern commercial farmers and was suspicious of experiments in government planning.  David Lilienthal was an outspoken advocate of public power who wanted TVA to compete directly with private industries.  Each had very different ideas about the direction TVA could and should take.  A battle between the three administrators went on from 1933 until March 1938, when Arthur Morgan was fired.  Harcourt Morgan and Lilienthal eventually formed a coalition on the Board against Arthur Morgan.  The division led to public conflict between the board members, and in 1938 Roosevelt dismissed Arthur Morgan.  In 1938, after Arthur Morgan’s dismissal, Harcourt Morgan became the new head of the Authority, followed by Lilienthal in 1941.  The fact that its main offices are located in the region, rather than in Washington D.C., allows the TVA to maintain a close working relationship with the people of the region.

        The Tennessee Valley Authority is a government-owned agency that competes with private power companies.  Electric power, generated at the completed dams, was being sold at wholesale to nearly 100 municipalities, and cooperative associations, attending to more than 325,000 consumers. The TVA was distributing power directly to retail consumers in four areas on a temporary basis, pending transfer of the systems to local agencies. Also, four large industrial companies were using TVA power under individual contracts. As provided in the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, power must be sold to consumers at low rates. Experience of municipalities and corporations distributing TVA power has shown that this results in increased consumption and affords a fair and useful comparison of how much the public should pay for electric service. Special attention has been given to promoting the use of electricity in rural areas. Almost 7,000 miles of rural line were in operation on June 30, 1939, most of them owned and operated by cooperative associations and municipalities. More than 85 percent of the total represented the construction of new lines carrying power to areas previously without service. The usual procedure, the TVA reports, has been for the Rural Electrification Administration to lend the capital, and for TVA or some other agency to build the line, under contract with the local body, which operates it.  The development of the Tennessee Valley Authority upset many people in the United States.  The strongest opposition to the TVA came from power companies, who received the cheaper energy available through TVA, and saw it as a threat to private development.  The public screamed that the government’s involvement in the power business was unconstitutional.  Wendell Willkie, who was president of the Commonwealth and Southern Company, which was an adversary of the TVA, led the conflict with TVA.   

In the 1930’s there were many court cases brought against the Tennessee Valley Authority.  The Alabama Power Company argued a suit against the TVA that was brought in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.  They said that the government going into the electrical business was unconstitutional and unfair.  In February of 1936, the Supreme Court ruled that the TVA had authority to generate power at Wilson Dam, to distribute the electricity and to sell it.  In 1935 John Battle, Executive Secretary of the National Coal Association, testified before a Congressional Hearing in regards to the TVA.  He spoke on behalf of many private utility businesses that were concerned about the federal government’s entry into the power business. Even saying, “We are willing to be put out of business if it can be done in a plain straightforward business like manner, but we do object to our Government putting us out of business.”

        During World War II, the U.S. needed aluminum to build things such as bombs and tanks, etc.  Aluminum plants require a lot of electricity, so the TVA engaged in one of the largest hydropower construction programs ever undertaken in the United States.  While at its peak, during World War II, 12 hydroelectric projects and a steam plant were under construction.  Employment had reached a total of approximately 28,000 employees. 

        As Hitler gained power and Japan was gaining power to take over parts of Asia, the TVA responded by increasing their energy output.  Although it seems the TVA and the struggle against global totalitarianism had nothing in common, the TVA played an integral role in the nation’s defense.   As early as 1935, Chairman Arthur Morgan testified before Congress that, “an adequate supply of energy comes pretty close to being a matter of national defense.”  Over the next six years, the TVA took initiative and increased their energy output to be ready in case a war reared its ugly head.  Later, the Federal Power Commission declared that without the TVA, the United States wouldn’t have been prepared to fight in 1941.  The TVA had many power customers that were important to the war effort, but two of them were much larger than all the rest.  Alcoa, Aluminum Company of America, was the one of the largest aluminum factories in its time.  The second, was a secret project set up in an isolated area near the Clinch River.  It was part of a large effort codenamed the Manhattan Project.  This project, of course, produced the first atomic bomb.  The reasons for choosing this area near the Clinch River were the large amounts of energy required to fuel the elements of nuclear materials production, and from the fact that nuclear materials require large amounts of fresh water for cooling.  The Manhattan Project, they used millions of kilowatts of TVA energy for something that the Chairman didn’t even know about.

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