I did a tribute to WPA last year. The Tennessee Valley Authority was another of the New Deal’s giant perpetual improvements to America. TVA and the smaller Bonneville Power Administration continue even now as the sole illustrations of government working like a business. Both still make a profit from selling electricity. They create real value and sell it to real farmers and businesses. The rest of government creates real wars and real torture camps and sells them to Jeff Bezos and Larry Fink.
Let’s start with a manifesto written by an architecture journal observing the project. The author understood the essential PURPOSE of the New Deal.
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There is also, I think, in the TVA project another, even deeper, source of hope and confidence. It is the world’s most striking contemporary example that planning – large-scale planning – is possible in a democracy; that no such false efficiency as that of a dictatorship is necessary to produce great national works, conceived and executed for the benefit of all the people. Perhaps one could go further and even say that, under a dictatorship, the controlling atmosphere which creates the humanity and charm of much of the TVA work would have been impossible. The designers have somehow, through subtle design and human planning, set human beings as the center of the whole scheme. Before these buildings one feels inevitably that, despite their size, despite the billions of gallons of water which they control and the several million horsepower they generate, they all exist for the advantage of simple human persons, for the common good.
Perhaps this matter of democracy goes even deeper than the mere purpose of this enterprise; perhaps it is this ideal of democracy itself, permeating the entire TVA organization, which has made possible within it a type of enthusiastic, sympathetic, understanding cooperation that no other system could produce. If the world is to progress in these highly mechanized times, tremendous public works, tremendous efforts at planning will be necessary. It has long been the boast of totalitarian thinkers that only in their system is efficient large-scale planning possible. In the achievements of TVA the United States has proved the contrary, and for that the TVA projects gain an importance which may even transcend their entire practical performance.
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Through the 1920s southern congressmen had repeatedly tried to get dams built on the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers. A dam at Muscle Shoals had been built in WW1, but Northerners blocked the newer efforts. When the bills made it through both houses, Coolidge and Hoover vetoed them.
On April 10, 1933, shortly after his inauguration, FDR delivered the following message to Congress:
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The continued idleness of a great national investment in the Tennessee Valley leads me to ask the Congress for legislation necessary to enlist this project in the service of the people.
It is clear that the Muscle Shoals development is but a small part of the potential public usefulness of the entire Tennessee River. Such use, if envisioned in its entirety, transcends mere power development: it enters the wide fields of flood control, soil erosion, afforestation, elimination from agricultural use of marginal lands, and distribution and diversification of industry. In short, this power development of war days leads logically to national planning for a complete river watershed involving many States and the future lives and welfare of millions. It touches and gives life to all forms of human concerns.
I, therefore, suggest to the Congress legislation to create a Tennessee Valley Authority – a corporation clothed with the power of Government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise. It should be charged with the broadest duty of planning for the proper use, conservation, and development of the natural resources of the Tennessee River drainage basin and its adjoining territory for the general social and economic welfare of the Nation.
Here and there a few wise cities and counties have looked ahead and planned. But our Nation has “just grown.” It is time to extend planning to a wider field, in this instance comprehending in one great project many States directly concerned with the basin of one of our greatest rivers. This in a true sense is a return to the spirit and vision of the pioneer. If we are successful here we can march on, step by step, in a like development of other great natural territorial units within our borders.
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FDR’s team had planned everything in advance. The agency was ready to run, and started surveying and engineering in August. Fortunately the Army Engineers, who were always eager to build dams everywhere, had already done some of the planning for the dams. The TVA also started planning the town of Norris to help build and maintain the Norris dam. Other dams in the system were close enough to cities that they didn’t need a new community.
Continued in Part 2.
Polistra's Mill 