NOTES IN THE NEWS / Our Dawdling Diplomacy
TV A: DEMOCRACY IN ACTION by SENATOR LISTER HILL Twenty-five years have passed since the historic legislation creating TVA was enacted, and a new generation of Americans has grown to maturity. A...
...For generations that soil, the priceless heritage of the people, had washed away...
...It accounts for the notable efficiency and the high morale of the staff of TVA...
...I am the only one who has had the privilege of participating year by year in legislation affecting TVA, first from my seat as a member of the Military Affairs Committee of the House, later as a member of the Appropriations Committee of the Senate...
...I am proud when I survey the financial record of TVA...
...At the same time we tried to build a bulwark against the steady tide of centralization...
...Today the Tennessee River is no longer a menace and a problem...
...Today this region has started the long road back to robust strength and abundant productivity...
...In 1933 the people of this region had an average income only 45 per cent of the national average, in spite of the wealth of resources with which nature had endowed it...
...The high use, low rate pricing policies which the private power companies had been too timid to risk turned out to be sound...
...Today the people know that when the rains come and the water rushes down in angry torrents, the same dams which control the river to create a navigation channel will stand watch through all the days and all the nights of peril, silent guardians of their safety...
...The new generation has never known what it was like before TVA, how anxious watchers gathered on the river's banks, how desperate families moved their household goods to the hills...
...In this one river basin the interrelationship of land and water, of trees and pastures, of men and nature, received statutory recognition...
...I cannot give a simple answer, but I believe that part of the magic lies in the kind of statute Congress drafted...
...Every report from TVA reveals it...
...Its survival, its growth, its strength today is their memorial...
...when TVA was created...
...This is the record which makes me salute the management of TVA on this anniversary...
...This was the region before TVA...
...Every year the people had less hope and less faith in the future...
...The experts got out of their offices, away from their papers...
...There are new kinds of jobs in new manufacturing establishments...
...It is also time enough for people to forget what life was like before that concept was built into our nation's life...
...They never forget the purpose of their labor...
...This is a record for every American to view with pride...
...Norris' dogged, fifteen year fight in Congress to save Wilson Dam and the Muscle Shoals chemical plants for the people is credited with making TVA possible...
...There are more jobs for the new generation...
...It flowed south through the foothills of Tennessee, turned west to meander across the sunbaked fields of Alabama and of Mississippi, swung northward to meet the Ohio in Kentucky, then to join the mighty Mississippi on its course to the Gulf...
...The spirit of TVA echoes around the world...
...Twice they received a Presidential veto...
...This is a good time to tell the new generation why TVA was established, and what it has accomplished...
...The war was over before the project was completed, and Congress had to decide what to do with the idle properties...
...That is of course the ultimate objective of every government program, but the purpose for which projects are built is too often obscured by the projects themselves...
...TVA was not conceived as a military project...
...Norris Dam, the first of the new TVA system, is a monument to his courage and determination...
...So we told the Board of TVA to make its headquarters in the region, close to the work to be undertaken...
...I find it in the lowered rates for electricity charged by private companies today...
...Twice bills to provide for government operation of the properties at Muscle Shoals were adopted by the Congress...
...From the Great Lakes to the Gulf the products of other regions come to new markets in this Valley, and the river serves the people...
...Farmers joined and showed their neighbors what would happen to the land and to their incomes as they began to use the new kinds of fertilizers produced by TVA as tools to change the management of their farms...
...river so controlled, the only river where, under a single management, a whole system of dams and reservoirs can be mobilized in harmony to protect the people and their property...
...When President Roosevelt sent his special message to the Congress urging prompt enactment of the TVA legislation, he said, "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...
...The people have had a major part in the development of the great regional power system...
...It is recorded in the homes and farms of the region—in the installation of stoves and washing machines, refrigerators and freezers, milking machines, pumps, water systems, and hay driers...
...Everywhere, as free men plan their future, they know their destiny depends upon the effective development of all of nature's resources for the benefit of all the people...
...It was a moody and inconstant river, changing from season to season, an angry flood in spring and winter, a sluggish trickle in summer and autumn when shoals and sandbars held it almost useless for navigation...
...Once more a troubled world is reminded that vision is required lest the people perish, and that the great imperative of government is to offer hospitality to dreams and then to find ways to translate them into effective wrorks, It is a good time to give to every American a sense of pride in the vitality and the strength of TVA, and to explain, if we can, why this agency has been able to survive attacks and neglect, why it continues today valiantly planning for the future, its spirit unbroken, facing its relentless adversaries with courage, faithful to the vision written in its statute...
...It is important for the new generation to know that this dream of the unified development of all the resources of a great river basin for the people's benefit was not born out of sectional interest nor parochial concern...
...While we have not yet "marched on" to the creation of other valley authorities, we are moving "step by step" in the improvement of federal administration of resource development...
...There was a great river, its tributaries rising high in the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia...
...There is nothing like it anywhere...
...My colleagues of 1933 would be proud if they could know that from the beginning, revenues from power sales have covered all the costs of operation, including depreciation, and in addition have provided for the government, the owner, a return which has averaged four per cent on the investment...
...too much was decided by remote control...
...The new generation has grown accustomed to the interregional exchange of goods...
...In flood and in drouth, racing or heavy with summer's languor, in every season the river was dark with the precious cargo it carried—the fertile soil of the Valley, to be wasted in the sea...
...It is recorded in the increased use of electricity by the people, not only in the region it serves but all over the nation...
...Alone of all the witnesses when the President signed the Act in 1933, I have seen the dreams we wrote into the statute become reality...
...I am aware of better personnel practices as a result of TVA's development of its independent merit system, and I see modest efforts to follow its pioneering in the adoption of effective and honest procedures of collective bargaining...
...Its future lies in the hands of the new generation...
...Every year fewer jobs became available, and the youth of the land was exported along with the soil and the timber...
...This was an agricultural area, one of the oldest in the nation, an area of small farms, growing the cash crops for which the climate was ideal but which left no cover to protect the ground as it lay, bare and unfrozen, helpless against the pelting winter rains...
...Now a chain of lovely lakes, its bars and shoals have vanished, and commerce moves in stately sequence over a modern water highway...
...Twenty-five years have passed since that day...
...By law we freed the agency from the rigidities of the classified civil service...
...They shine from barns, and kitchens, and parlors, deep in the coves and high on the hillsides...
...Senator from Alabama, is one of the founders of TVA and a leading spokesman for public power and unified river development...
...Dreams of a better future, of a widening economic opportunity for the people, and faith that a new kind of agency of government could help to provide it—all these are captured in the charter we wrote for TVA...
...With the exception of direct sales to agencies of the United States and a few large industries, TVA is a wholesaler of power...
...We gave TVA responsibility to inaugurate a total program committed to the full development of all nature's resources for all the people...
...An anniversary is a time for remembrance and for recognition...
...Last year more than two billion ton-miles of freight was carried on the river, in contrast to less than 33 million ton-miles which moved, mostly in short hauls, in 1933...
...Every legislator grows weary with awareness of great concepts which grow meager in execution, of noble ideas corrupted in administration...
...Slowly the demonstrations spread over the Valley and farther—demonstrations in tree planting, in selective cutting, in sawmill operations...
...Let me remind this new generation what life was like in the region LISTER HILL, U.S...
...Somehow, in some way, some ingredient in the formula we devised for TVA has kept the overriding purpose sharp and clear...
...demonstrations in fertilizer use, in new farming practices, in the development of recreational areas...
...I see the results of TVA's achievements when I read the advertisements of the fertilizer companies, as they begin to provide the farmer with new and better plant food for his land...
...I came to Congress in the midst of that debate, and I shall be forever grateful that I have had a part in this great struggle throughout my whole career in public service...
...They do not know how often this uncertain river held the lives and health and well-being of the people in jeopardy...
...But always rivers and resources, problems and opportunities had been considered piecemeal...
...Owners of woodlots and forest joined...
...A series of majestic dams has transformed it...
...A generation is time enough to test the truth of an idea and the strength of a concept...
...We told the Board to select its own employees, but barred for all time political considerations in appointments...
...TVA is shaped in their image, indelibly marked with their integrity, their moral purpose, and their vision of a federal program which would never forget the people for whom it was enacted...
...Last year alone new private investment in wood-using industries in the Valley reached a total of more than $43 million...
...A valiant band worked with him...
...We made it an independent agency, corporate in form, removed as far as possible from centralized control in Washington...
...Once majestic forests had been denuded, a sacrifice to avarice, to ignorance, and to hunger...
...The triumph of TVA is not recorded in the excellent financial reports, or in its contributions to the nation's defense...
...The forest resource is coming back, the cycle of devastation reversed...
...In the beginning their participation in the program was an act of faith, too, for when TVA's resale rates were announced in 1933 no one knew what revenues those rates would provide...
...I hear the echo from India, from Iran, from Uganda, and from Wales...
...The fight, first to keep those properties in the hands of the government, and then to devise a method to promote their effective use, went on for more than a decade...
...All have been vital to TVA's success...
...The new generation does not know what life was like before transmission towers rose high from valleys and mountains to carry the lines that bring to the people power generated at these multi-purpose dams and in gigantic modern steam plants built by TVA...
...In the beginning only a few men had the vision to see that the properties were not "surplus" to the needs of the government at all, that they were an asset which could provide the beginning of a new approach to an old problem...
...This is the record which profoundly moves me as I recall the day when TVA began...
...That is not all...
...Today more than 95 per cent of the farms use electricity in their homes and in their barns...
...We gave the power of decision to the men in the field...
...That faith proved to be contagious, and early in its history TVA took the steps which have made the people of the region a part of the great program...
...More than half—a staggering 30 billion kilowatt hours in 1957—goes to the Atomic Energy Commission plants at Oak Ridge and Paducah...
...All are locally owned and managed, two privately owned, the rest rural cooperatives or municipal systems...
...My obligation to remember and to reappraise is a deep and personal one, for I was one of the sponsors of the legislation which created TVA, and of all the members of the Conference Committee appointed to adjust the differences between the two Houses in 1933, I am the only one who is today a member of the Congress...
...It was an act of faith when TVA declined to begin the acquisition of vast acreages of worn-out crop land that it might be devoted, unhampered by the need to support farm families, to experimentation in the application of the new fertilizers to be produced at Muscle Shoals...
...We authorized the Board to buy or condemn the land and the equipment required in its program, and to sell whatever proved to be surplus...
...These plants alone use twice as much electricity as New York Gity, and more than is used by all the homes, businesses, and industries in each of 41 states...
...It was a different kind of region then...
...For me TVA's arrival at the quarter century mark is a moment of special poignance, and of peculiar obligation...
...Even then we knew too many decisions were made in Washington on the basis of papers and reports...
...225,000 residential electricity consumers in the entire area where power from TVA now reaches more than 1,300,000 domestic consumers, and they used small amounts of electricity in their homes and almost none at all on their farms...
...The symbol of TVA is revealed when the lights go on at nightfall all over the region...
...For in this region their performance has outstripped our dreams...
...I hear echoes of TVA when plans are now submitted to the Congress on a river basin basis, when "coordinating committees" are established in the field as the central agencies of government and try to achieve the shadow of the unified approach without the substance...
...The experts of the private companies serving the area said the people would not use the power the dams would produce...
...So the rains were unimpeded...
...And a heritage from World War I provided an opportunity...
...Since TVA began, almost half a billion pine seedlings have been planted and are growing to maturity...
...To them TVA is a pace-setter and a symbol of hope...
...The great and indomitable George Norris of Nebraska was the leader in the Congress...
...It was an act of faith when, after so many years of effort, Congress placed the destiny of this new agency in the hands of the three men chosen for the Board...
...In contracts with TVA these distributors agree to charge the rates established to promote abundant use, and to dispose of revenues in such a way as to achieve the objectives in the statute...
...Every undertaking was seen as a means to widen the economic opportunity and promote the well-being of the people...
...It was an act of faith in the people when TVA rejected such alluring proposals as the recommended purchase of great tracts of forest land, all abused and some abandoned, in order that a gigantic program of reforestation might be inaugurated on government-owned land...
...We were uncertain, as we strove to create this new agency to deal with old problems...
...It was created to serve the people, all the people of the United States, to demonstrate what happens to a region and to a power supplier when power is used as a tool to develop the economy of a region, to raise the standard of living of the people...
...The people of this region have proved them wrong...
...But I am proud that TVA has never forgotten why it was created...
...A new epoch in federal administration began...
...It was born because statesmen from the great plains, from the mountain West and the industrial East, saw this nation as one and indivisible, and knew that the country they loved and served would be strong only as each region grew in strength...
...Only three per cent of the farms, just a few near towns or cotton gins, were connected for electric service...
...It is clear every time a witness from TVA testifies before a Committee of the Congress...
...In TVA we tried something new and bold...
...Today 151 distribution systems with a total investment of almost $600 million deliver the power to the consumer...
...The experts were too far from the problems, the administrators too far from the people...
...TVA has had an important impact on other federal programs...
...They went to the people, and the people joined them in a great demonstration program...
...The symbol of TVA is not a balance sheet, no matter how impressive...
...Reluctant rivers had been improved for navigation from the beginning of the nation...
...But greater than any one of those, I believe, is the fact that somehow the overriding purpose of the statute was clear on every page...
...There are jobs in the forests products industries, 50,-000 of them, because tall trees stand on land that was barren in 1933, and the people plant and they plan for a stronger forest resource in the future, investing their private funds in their faith...
...The new generation should find out why...
...Where acres were brown and barren, now pastures lie green beneath the sun and the landscape is more beautiful, the land more productive...
...It was not until 1933, under the dynamic leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that the statute creating TVA was approved by Congress, the properties at Muscle Shoals were turned over to the new agency, and the President who had expanded the scope of the original proposals with his vision and his dreams signed the enabling legislation...
...This is the only U.S...
...It is a time for reappraisal...
...Its past is open for examination and for analysis...
...Slowly the scars of erosion are healing...
...It chose the slower, the harder way...
...I note with satisfaction improvement in the land purchasing procedures of some federal agencies as they adapt TVA experience to their requirements...
...Almost three-fourths of TVA's power output goes to defense and defense-related industries...
...Every year more farms were abandoned...
...It mobilized their energies for a total assault on the forces of resource devastation...
...They took the soil to the river, and the river carried it to the sea, and every year the brown scars of erosion grew wider and deeper over the landscape...
...I am proud to know that over $400 million from proceeds has been reinvested in the system, enhancing the government's investment without requiring appropriation, and that $240 million has been paid to the Treasury in cash...
...The heart of the great concept lies in the fact that for the first time in the history of federal legislation Congress accepted the unity of nature...
...At low rates, the volume of sales did rise, and increased revenues resulted...
...But today TVA is in the forefront in the development of atomic weapons, missiles, vital light metals, and new chemicals...
...There are jobs in cheese factories and in poultry processing plants because the land has been turned from soil-exhausting to soil-conserving crops...
...In 1933 there were only The late Senator George W. Norris, of Nebraska, stands before the dam that bears his name...
...We wanted TVA to be efficient, and we accepted the basic principle of modern management, still rarely recognized in government...
...A great concept started along the road to realization...
...All over the region the countryside was dark at twilight...
...These administrative innovations were not to be ends in themselves, nor were the projects and the programs they would facilitate be objectives in themselves...
...They could enter into contracts, and sue and be sued...
...Construction becomes an end in itself...
...For then and now the traditional organization of the federal establishments divides responsibility for the resources of a river and its basin among a dozen bureaus and departments, each with a single purpose, a different head, working under separate statutes...
...This does not often happen...
...They have shared the dream...
...I see a trace of TVA when the potential recreational value to the people is included in the "benefits" expected to be realized from construction of new federal projects, and "small watersheds" are brought to our attention...
...There are jobs because of the development of the magnificent recreational resource which has already attracted private investment of more than $60 million, as TVA has divested itself of area after area, and turned over to the people, for public and private development, the land adjacent to the beautiful man-made lakes...
...Today the average income of the people has risen from 45 per cent to 63 per cent of the national average...
...The problem of vanishing resources had been with us a long time...
...TVA determined that the people who in the period of their private ownership become trustees of the nation's resources should themselves take part in the program...
...And it is spared the terror of floods...
...We did a better job than we knew...
...The general assumption was that the properties were "surplus" to the government's requirements, and should be sold...
...To most people the question before Congress in the early Twenties was relatively simple—how to dispose of the properties most advantageously...
...We have been successful here...
...We gave authority commensurate with responsibility and we determined to judge by results...
...The river is serving the people throughout its length today because of the Act of Congress which created TVA...
...They have taken risks...
...All these characteristics have proved to be essential—the unified approach, the location in the region, the accountability which is the counterpart of independence, the stern rejection of political manipulation...
...In this region, as nowhere else, the people have participated in a federal proWrapping It Up gram inaugurated to promote their well-being...
...This was the problem facing the Congress...
...Then, when German submarines had halted the shipments of nitrates from Chile, the government had built facilities for munitions production at Muscle Shoals in northern Alabama, and construction of a dam across the Tennessee was begun to supply the power required for operation of the nitrate plants...
...They have had faith...
...It has been put to work for the people...
...Grain comes down from the upper Mississippi, oil and sulphur move up from the Gulf, automobiles, trucks, steel, and coal are carried for unloading at thriving river ports on the Tennessee...
...It was clear in the legislative history of more than a dozen years...
...TVA is different...
...This was a more startling innovation than it sounds...
...It was a demonstration that the public interest could be served without the financial ruin predicted by the private power companies...
Vol. 22 • May 1958 • No. 5
