On May 18, 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, he took what he saw as a vital step towards fulfilling his promise of a “New Deal” for the American people. . The Great Depression had dragged on for over three years by then, with no end in sight.
The newly formed Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) would serve as a federally owned and operated electric utility company and regional economic development agency for the Tennessee Valley. Crossing seven southeastern states – Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee – the region was one of the poorest in the country and one of the hardest hit by the depression.
Spring rains swelled the Tennessee River every year, causing flooding that removed vital topsoil necessary for the crop. But the mighty river had enormous potential, if it could be controlled. This is exactly what the VAT wanted to do – and much more.
“It’s a multi-state regional economic development authority with all the powers that entails,” says Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California, Davis and author of Why is the New Deal important. “[The TVA] is authorized to build dams both to improve navigation and to produce hydroelectricity, to create networks to distribute this electricity as a public power … as well as to deal with practically all aspects of common life in the region.
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Origins of VAT: Muscle Shoals
May 1933: President Roosevelt presents Senator Norris of Nebraska with the pen he used to sign the Muscle Shoals Bill. Sponsored by the senator from Nebraska, the bill provided for the development of the entire Tennessee Valley,
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Congress authorized the US government to begin construction of the Wilson Dam at Muscle Shoals, Alabama in 1916. The site was named for the rapids or “shoals” produced by a steep drop in elevation of the Tennessee River at that time. point. Although the dam was originally intended to supply hydroelectric power to two factories responsible for producing nitrates for explosives, World War I ended before the installations were completed.
Throughout the 1920s, politicians debated what to do with the site. Senator George Norris, a progressive Republican, said the government should take more control over energy production. Norris has tried on several occasions to introduce bills providing for the federal development of the Muscle Shoals site – only to see them shot down by the Republican presidential administrations.
WATCH: The Tennessee Valley Authority episode of “Modern Marvels” on HISTORY Vault.
Progress and controversy
The Norris Dam on the Clinch River in the northeastern Tennessee Valley Authority, designed to create an 83 square mile mountain lake. The two towers visible against the trees were part of the cable car system that, about 400 feet above the river, carried concrete to the job site and lowered it to the formwork below.
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But with Roosevelt now in the White House, the wind had turned to Norris’ ideas. The ambitious goals of the TVA included improving navigation on the river, controlling floods, reforestation, providing a reliable water supply, modernizing agricultural techniques and providing affordable electricity to residents. of the region. His efforts made a difference almost immediately: dam construction and other agency activities created thousands of jobs, and by 1935 the cost of electric power in the Tennessee Valley had fallen to 30%. below the national average.
Although it brought electricity and modern conveniences to many rural families who had never had one before, the VAT also had negative effects. Construction of the Norris Dam in Tennessee, which began in October 1933, forced nearly 3,000 people from their homes, but the government offered compensation only for the relocation of some 5,200 graves.
READ MORE: Did New Deal Programs Help End The Great Depression?
Legal battles around VAT
Wendell Willkie, President of the Commonwealth and Southern Corporation, appearing before the Congressional Joint Committee during the inquiry into the affairs of the Tennessee Valley Authority, November 26, 1938.
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Government-owned power plants, Roosevelt argued in his 1932 presidential campaign, should be used as a “yardstick to prevent extortion” by private power companies. “They’ll know the labor costs, they’ll know the cost of production, they’ll know the distribution costs, and then they could say – well, that’s a reasonable amount to charge,” Rauchway says of public factories. “This of course threatened … private monopolies, who wanted the authority to decide what was reasonable to charge themselves.”
Wendell Wilkie, chairman of a large electricity company called the Commonwealth and Southern Company, led the fight against VAT. He and other representatives of power companies filed numerous lawsuits and injunctions in the 1930s, preventing VAT from supplying electricity to many southern cities in the meantime.
But in February 1936, the Supreme Court ruled in Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, a case brought by the Alabama Power Company, that Congress had not exceeded its constitutional powers by creating the VAT to build the Wilson Dam and sell it. and distribute the electricity produced there. . In the 1939 case of Tennessee Electric Power Company v. VAT, the Court again confirmed the constitutionality of VAT.
How the VAT succeeded and fell short
Two men working on telephone lines, Tennessee, June 1942.
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During World War II, the VAT would play a pivotal role in American war production. The region produced everything from ammunition and fertilizers for food production to aluminum for aircraft machinery. Electricity from the TVA also powered Oak Ridge in the Tennessee Hills, one of the top-secret sites built to produce uranium for the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project.
The TVA has brought higher incomes and greater comfort to a large part of the region’s population, slowed land erosion from river flooding, and improved land use. But the agency fell short of the idealized vision of its creators in other respects.
“It didn’t allow people to stay on earth as they originally envisioned,” says Rauchway. Instead of encouraging local and regional agriculture and fostering a kind of “slow food” cooperative movement, he says that VAT “has accelerated the region’s integration into the modern economy”. Additionally, many factories in the region switched from hydropower to coal power after World War II, a change that would have long-term environmental impacts.
Despite its shortcomings, the TVA would serve as a model for both rural electrification programs in the United States and government-led regional development programs around the world, especially in poorer countries. One of the few public works programs created during the New Deal that still exists, it remains the largest electricity supplier in the country, sending electricity from a combination of hydropower, coal-fired, natural gas, nuclear and renewables to approximately 10 million people across the Tennessee Valley.
