NOW THAT it has battled and builded and won, accomplishment is chalked up for the T.V.A. It has arrived, has taken its place, and will remain. Millions of little soldiers, the fastest on earth, la Grande Armee des Voltes, march forth on wires, wriggle into the homes of thousands and attack the job of cooking, keeping the family warm and lighting up the place.
The T.V.A. enters 1937 as an outstanding success of the administration. Honest conservatives who can add two and two are satisfied. Per-month gross generation power has jumped from 44,500,000 to 112,000,000 kilowatts. Where Wilson Dam had one grudging, monopolistic customer—the Commonwealth and Southern—the Authority now has some two dozen satisfied ones, including cooperatives and municipally owned lighting systems. Farmers constitute 62 percent of the ultimate consumers. For—and these words underestimate the situation—the T.V.A. and its national implications are colossal, stupendous, mighty, great. Let us take it up to date, therefore, and discuss its faults first. Here are four of them:
First: The atmosphere is—I cannot express myself exactly, since I am only a congressman, and therefore lack the cultural and scientific knowledge possessed by some of the T.V.A.'ers. But the air is somewhat rarefied, and I am sure I heard the swishing of long wings and saw Green Pastures and De Lawd (Morgan).
Second: Connected with this impersonal atmosphere is the matter of attitude, which is personal. It is, that all "politicians" have red tails and work in sordid surroundings just as T.V.A.'ers have wings and work in Green Pastures; these judgments to include their best political friends. In this they violently differ from the du Ponts, for the du Ponts sanctify all who agree with them. There are, however, certain similarities, in that they believe "the government should not meddle with business"—not, at least, with the T.V.A.
The personnel department, despising politics and politicians, is not altogether against a little internal politics. Woe be to him who applies for a job with the endorsement of a Congressman or Senator. The directors have little comprehension of the political mind; and the personnel department, wholly inexperienced in dealing with the politicos, writes unnecessarily sharp letters.
Third: "The Morgan-Lilienthal Feud." Leaving aside the trivialities, it seems that King Arthur Morgan of the Round Table wants all the Utility Knights, good and bad, public and private, to sit around and make goo-goo eyes at each other. Little Dave Lilienthal wants to slay the Power Goliath, and possibly to kick the whole table over.
Fourth: The office in Washington is a detriment to the T.V.A. It is a poor contact office and its members, save the publicity department, should be emptied forthwith into the Potomac.
None of these specified weaknesses means that the T.V.A. is badly managed. Far from it; it is one of the best managed big businesses, public or private, in America. The personnel department has employed excellent men, but has insulted practically everyone that the U.S. mails could reach. Chairman Arthur Morgan, David Lilienthal and Harcourt Morgan are personally incorruptible, anxious to serve the country, and very able. For the work in hand the engineers, foresters, soil experts, lawyers, skilled and common laborers of all kinds constitute a force equal, and probably superior, to any other such force in the history of America.
Stupidity—(and now I speak of mankind's and not the T.V.A.'s)—is the worst foe of human progress. For there are citizens who, having a general idea that the T.V.A. may lessen the value of a stock or bond, are willing to put in jeopardy the whole great program without further investigation. But if I am any judge of public opinion, the vast majority of the American people want the T.V.A.
Let us look at the Act, and review some of the results of the past three and a half years:
DAMS AND DAMS
The Act provides for dams to be built in the Tennessee River and its tributaries. From Paducah to Knoxville—648 river miles—a nine-foot channel for navigation is to be created. Storage dams in tributaries will hold back surplus water during heavy water periods and release that water when dry months come.
Building of dams has proceeded successfully; a study of the map will disclose the whole plan. They represent a coordinated system of flood control that actually works, of navigation now being used, but capable of great development. Army engineers, unbiased and non-political, believe that all this is not only feasible but essential. The dams are not just to sit there and wrestle with floods.
POWER
The dams will also furnish, and do furnish, power; and this is the focal point of the battle. For private business is always willing for the government to stop a flood—but when these flood waters are utilized for the purpose of paying for the dam by selling cheap service to the American people who built it, a cry goes up of interfering with "private business." In any event, the act reads "...to provide and operate facilities for the generation of electric energy in order to avoid the waste of water power, to transmit and market. . . ."
Electricity produced is now going into construction projects, municipalities and county cooperatives, and some to private power companies. The municipalities will soon number sixteen, cooperatives thirteen, and there are now five temporary connections. Power comes from Wilson (wartime) Dam. There is a 230-mile transmission line connecting it with Wheeler and Norris Dams, from which latter power is also produced. The T.V.A. is serving private industry; last year the Commonwealth and its subsidiaries bought $588,000 worth; Alabama now cries for more.
SOIL CONSERVATION
Soil conservation is here used in the sense of conserving natural resources—soil, water, trees and vegetation in general. This wide program has been evolved out of the part of the original Act which instructs the T.V.A. to improve and cheapen the production of fertilizers, and to provide demonstrations and tests in cooperation with government agencies and the public. This was because of the wartime nitrate plant at Muscle Shoals.
With this as a starter, and principally because of the knowledge of Dr. Harcourt Morgan (who was president of the University of Tennessee), the idea has been expanded. With a basic and thorough knowledge of the need for phosphorus, and the realization that it must be available to farmers if the land is not to be washed into the sea, an intelligently integrated program is under way.
The T.V.A. is making and experimenting in concentrated fertilizer from phosphate-bearing rock. The farmers of the country need 20,000,000 tons of this fertilizer each year. Only 2,000,000 are being used. Methods of the T.V.A. will lead to the wide development of other sources.
This use of fertilizer and the growth of cover crops work in with the protection of little waters. Water is slowed down and is clearer; this fits into the scheme of huge dams. Areas unfit for cultivation are being reforested with seedlings grown in three T.V.A. nurseries. C.C.C. boys treat eroded land. Land-grant colleges, the Department of Agriculture and the Resettlement Administration do their part. Finally, farmers individually and in clubs (collectively, my friend) are farming to save the soil, slow the water, prevent floods—and make better crops. This program makes the Seven State Valley look like a different place.
I have lately talked with workers of all kinds in the T.V.A. Many never worked on any similar project, being residents of eastern Tennessee; they take it almost as religion and consider themselves improved. Others who worked in great private projects point to the T.V.A.'s better housing, decent conditions, sanitation, educational and other opportunities. There are no accumulations of tear-gas bombs and private artillery; no strikes, no shutdowns, no trouble.
These all point to certain facts:
1. Power can be produced, transmitted and sold by the government as well as by private endeavor, just as letters can be transmitted, agricultural stations operated and armies and navies moved by the government. The T.V.A. is an ordinary endeavor of ordinary American people, conducted by themselves, in behalf of themselves.
2. Natural resources are the basis of our lives, whether we live in the city or in the country, and the T.V.A. has shown the way.
3. Good pay, efficient housing and decent treatment of labor keep the peace. In the great engineering works, unit costs have been cut and in many instances made cheaper than similar work under private auspices.
4. It is possible to develop a non-political civil service, based altogether on merit. This will build permanence and a high standard of efficiency.
5. Considered as a whole, the T.V.A. is not an "experiment." It is a part of American life; it is here; it will stay.
All these operations which I have tried to analyze are being conducted under the most difficult conditions. Fighting great odds against fifty-grand lawyers and unsympathetic courts, they battle on. Here and there the private utilities rush their crews like invading armies, to erect spite lines in order to have claim of prior occupancy, as miners did in the gold-rush days. To this threat the T.V.A. marches out its pioneers, to save a right-of-way in their own country, for their own people. This is a dramatic and rather thrilling phase.
But the battle is being won; you see dams, transmission lines, municipal utilities, better farming, stoves, electrical appliances, all as a practical part of normal human life. People begin to regard electricity—which comes from water—as quite as fundamental as the water itself. Just as in the development of rural towns in America, where first people had their own wells or hauled the water, but gradually developed municipal water systems—so now cities are doing the same with electricity and getting it from the big T.V.A. reservoir. The farmer insists that he be included too.
The program of the T.V.A, has brought to the people of this nation the consciousness that its essential benefits are obtainable by cooperative, or government, endeavor. Further, all this is becoming an actual part of the economic and legal set-up of the nation—to such an extent that schools, roads, water in cities, post offices are accepted as a part of everyday living. And should the T.V.A. be held by some court to be "unconstitutional" or "against the law," the people would feel just as if their other institutions were taken from them. It would be like telling them the roads and bridges were no longer theirs, that their children could not get an elementary education, that the army was to be sold to the Hessians, the navy to Lafitte—and that, as a matter of fact, the United States of America itself is void, unconstitutional, and must fold up.
Recently, believers in public ownership, ordinary citizens, have been having chills and fever over the T.V.A. "power pool." All is lost, they have said, and contracts have been or will be written which choke the life out of the T.V.A. or any similar enterprise. For those who care to relax, it is well to know that the meeting at the White House adopted no agreements, announced no policies. The flag of the T.V.A. is still flying and no one has sold out.
What is the consumer's interest in the case of the T.V.A.? It gave lower or better rates and better conditions. Moreover, the T.V.A. has made the only appreciable dent that has ever been made in the matter of rates charged for electricity. It did this, not by contract, not by "pooling," not by paper policies, but by getting out into the field with the only yardstick American business recognizes, the yardstick of competition.
Is this yardstick-in-action to be thrown overboard? How is the pool to fix rates to the consumer? If the private companies are to have the advantages in generation resulting from the government's huge hydro-electric investment, how are those advantages going to be passed along to the consumer, and nailed down so the courts won't later take them away?
Let the T.V.A. and similar enterprises tell the world that they stand: (1) for government ownership, and (2) for directing any pool in which the government might have any interest whatever. The T.V.A. would like to cooperate if it could, does not want to destroy any investment, but certainly does not like to be double-crossed.
There is no rush about getting into this power pool. Let us take our time, of which we will have plenty. In the meantime possibly the utilities will learn, as they did in Sweden, that the government is a force to be reckoned with—then we may wade in. For the T.V.A. has been established upon a rock, and nothing shall prevail against it.
Maury Maverick, The New Republic, November 18, 1936
The T.V.A. enters 1937 as an outstanding success of the administration. Honest conservatives who can add two and two are satisfied. Per-month gross generation power has jumped from 44,500,000 to 112,000,000 kilowatts. Where Wilson Dam had one grudging, monopolistic customer—the Commonwealth and Southern—the Authority now has some two dozen satisfied ones, including cooperatives and municipally owned lighting systems. Farmers constitute 62 percent of the ultimate consumers. For—and these words underestimate the situation—the T.V.A. and its national implications are colossal, stupendous, mighty, great. Let us take it up to date, therefore, and discuss its faults first. Here are four of them:
First: The atmosphere is—I cannot express myself exactly, since I am only a congressman, and therefore lack the cultural and scientific knowledge possessed by some of the T.V.A.'ers. But the air is somewhat rarefied, and I am sure I heard the swishing of long wings and saw Green Pastures and De Lawd (Morgan).
Second: Connected with this impersonal atmosphere is the matter of attitude, which is personal. It is, that all "politicians" have red tails and work in sordid surroundings just as T.V.A.'ers have wings and work in Green Pastures; these judgments to include their best political friends. In this they violently differ from the du Ponts, for the du Ponts sanctify all who agree with them. There are, however, certain similarities, in that they believe "the government should not meddle with business"—not, at least, with the T.V.A.
The personnel department, despising politics and politicians, is not altogether against a little internal politics. Woe be to him who applies for a job with the endorsement of a Congressman or Senator. The directors have little comprehension of the political mind; and the personnel department, wholly inexperienced in dealing with the politicos, writes unnecessarily sharp letters.
Third: "The Morgan-Lilienthal Feud." Leaving aside the trivialities, it seems that King Arthur Morgan of the Round Table wants all the Utility Knights, good and bad, public and private, to sit around and make goo-goo eyes at each other. Little Dave Lilienthal wants to slay the Power Goliath, and possibly to kick the whole table over.
Fourth: The office in Washington is a detriment to the T.V.A. It is a poor contact office and its members, save the publicity department, should be emptied forthwith into the Potomac.
None of these specified weaknesses means that the T.V.A. is badly managed. Far from it; it is one of the best managed big businesses, public or private, in America. The personnel department has employed excellent men, but has insulted practically everyone that the U.S. mails could reach. Chairman Arthur Morgan, David Lilienthal and Harcourt Morgan are personally incorruptible, anxious to serve the country, and very able. For the work in hand the engineers, foresters, soil experts, lawyers, skilled and common laborers of all kinds constitute a force equal, and probably superior, to any other such force in the history of America.
Stupidity—(and now I speak of mankind's and not the T.V.A.'s)—is the worst foe of human progress. For there are citizens who, having a general idea that the T.V.A. may lessen the value of a stock or bond, are willing to put in jeopardy the whole great program without further investigation. But if I am any judge of public opinion, the vast majority of the American people want the T.V.A.
Let us look at the Act, and review some of the results of the past three and a half years:
DAMS AND DAMS
The Act provides for dams to be built in the Tennessee River and its tributaries. From Paducah to Knoxville—648 river miles—a nine-foot channel for navigation is to be created. Storage dams in tributaries will hold back surplus water during heavy water periods and release that water when dry months come.
Building of dams has proceeded successfully; a study of the map will disclose the whole plan. They represent a coordinated system of flood control that actually works, of navigation now being used, but capable of great development. Army engineers, unbiased and non-political, believe that all this is not only feasible but essential. The dams are not just to sit there and wrestle with floods.
POWER
The dams will also furnish, and do furnish, power; and this is the focal point of the battle. For private business is always willing for the government to stop a flood—but when these flood waters are utilized for the purpose of paying for the dam by selling cheap service to the American people who built it, a cry goes up of interfering with "private business." In any event, the act reads "...to provide and operate facilities for the generation of electric energy in order to avoid the waste of water power, to transmit and market. . . ."
Electricity produced is now going into construction projects, municipalities and county cooperatives, and some to private power companies. The municipalities will soon number sixteen, cooperatives thirteen, and there are now five temporary connections. Power comes from Wilson (wartime) Dam. There is a 230-mile transmission line connecting it with Wheeler and Norris Dams, from which latter power is also produced. The T.V.A. is serving private industry; last year the Commonwealth and its subsidiaries bought $588,000 worth; Alabama now cries for more.
SOIL CONSERVATION
Soil conservation is here used in the sense of conserving natural resources—soil, water, trees and vegetation in general. This wide program has been evolved out of the part of the original Act which instructs the T.V.A. to improve and cheapen the production of fertilizers, and to provide demonstrations and tests in cooperation with government agencies and the public. This was because of the wartime nitrate plant at Muscle Shoals.
With this as a starter, and principally because of the knowledge of Dr. Harcourt Morgan (who was president of the University of Tennessee), the idea has been expanded. With a basic and thorough knowledge of the need for phosphorus, and the realization that it must be available to farmers if the land is not to be washed into the sea, an intelligently integrated program is under way.
The T.V.A. is making and experimenting in concentrated fertilizer from phosphate-bearing rock. The farmers of the country need 20,000,000 tons of this fertilizer each year. Only 2,000,000 are being used. Methods of the T.V.A. will lead to the wide development of other sources.
This use of fertilizer and the growth of cover crops work in with the protection of little waters. Water is slowed down and is clearer; this fits into the scheme of huge dams. Areas unfit for cultivation are being reforested with seedlings grown in three T.V.A. nurseries. C.C.C. boys treat eroded land. Land-grant colleges, the Department of Agriculture and the Resettlement Administration do their part. Finally, farmers individually and in clubs (collectively, my friend) are farming to save the soil, slow the water, prevent floods—and make better crops. This program makes the Seven State Valley look like a different place.
I have lately talked with workers of all kinds in the T.V.A. Many never worked on any similar project, being residents of eastern Tennessee; they take it almost as religion and consider themselves improved. Others who worked in great private projects point to the T.V.A.'s better housing, decent conditions, sanitation, educational and other opportunities. There are no accumulations of tear-gas bombs and private artillery; no strikes, no shutdowns, no trouble.
These all point to certain facts:
1. Power can be produced, transmitted and sold by the government as well as by private endeavor, just as letters can be transmitted, agricultural stations operated and armies and navies moved by the government. The T.V.A. is an ordinary endeavor of ordinary American people, conducted by themselves, in behalf of themselves.
2. Natural resources are the basis of our lives, whether we live in the city or in the country, and the T.V.A. has shown the way.
3. Good pay, efficient housing and decent treatment of labor keep the peace. In the great engineering works, unit costs have been cut and in many instances made cheaper than similar work under private auspices.
4. It is possible to develop a non-political civil service, based altogether on merit. This will build permanence and a high standard of efficiency.
5. Considered as a whole, the T.V.A. is not an "experiment." It is a part of American life; it is here; it will stay.
All these operations which I have tried to analyze are being conducted under the most difficult conditions. Fighting great odds against fifty-grand lawyers and unsympathetic courts, they battle on. Here and there the private utilities rush their crews like invading armies, to erect spite lines in order to have claim of prior occupancy, as miners did in the gold-rush days. To this threat the T.V.A. marches out its pioneers, to save a right-of-way in their own country, for their own people. This is a dramatic and rather thrilling phase.
But the battle is being won; you see dams, transmission lines, municipal utilities, better farming, stoves, electrical appliances, all as a practical part of normal human life. People begin to regard electricity—which comes from water—as quite as fundamental as the water itself. Just as in the development of rural towns in America, where first people had their own wells or hauled the water, but gradually developed municipal water systems—so now cities are doing the same with electricity and getting it from the big T.V.A. reservoir. The farmer insists that he be included too.
The program of the T.V.A, has brought to the people of this nation the consciousness that its essential benefits are obtainable by cooperative, or government, endeavor. Further, all this is becoming an actual part of the economic and legal set-up of the nation—to such an extent that schools, roads, water in cities, post offices are accepted as a part of everyday living. And should the T.V.A. be held by some court to be "unconstitutional" or "against the law," the people would feel just as if their other institutions were taken from them. It would be like telling them the roads and bridges were no longer theirs, that their children could not get an elementary education, that the army was to be sold to the Hessians, the navy to Lafitte—and that, as a matter of fact, the United States of America itself is void, unconstitutional, and must fold up.
Recently, believers in public ownership, ordinary citizens, have been having chills and fever over the T.V.A. "power pool." All is lost, they have said, and contracts have been or will be written which choke the life out of the T.V.A. or any similar enterprise. For those who care to relax, it is well to know that the meeting at the White House adopted no agreements, announced no policies. The flag of the T.V.A. is still flying and no one has sold out.
What is the consumer's interest in the case of the T.V.A.? It gave lower or better rates and better conditions. Moreover, the T.V.A. has made the only appreciable dent that has ever been made in the matter of rates charged for electricity. It did this, not by contract, not by "pooling," not by paper policies, but by getting out into the field with the only yardstick American business recognizes, the yardstick of competition.
Is this yardstick-in-action to be thrown overboard? How is the pool to fix rates to the consumer? If the private companies are to have the advantages in generation resulting from the government's huge hydro-electric investment, how are those advantages going to be passed along to the consumer, and nailed down so the courts won't later take them away?
Let the T.V.A. and similar enterprises tell the world that they stand: (1) for government ownership, and (2) for directing any pool in which the government might have any interest whatever. The T.V.A. would like to cooperate if it could, does not want to destroy any investment, but certainly does not like to be double-crossed.
There is no rush about getting into this power pool. Let us take our time, of which we will have plenty. In the meantime possibly the utilities will learn, as they did in Sweden, that the government is a force to be reckoned with—then we may wade in. For the T.V.A. has been established upon a rock, and nothing shall prevail against it.
Maury Maverick, The New Republic, November 18, 1936
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