In WASHINGTON you find acres of office work set in a stately, remote city. The nation is being saved by a hurricane of inter-office memoranda, going round and round. The saviors wear a slightly confused air. One supposes that the spiral whirls upward, but one is not always sure. So many Corinthian columns, so many filing cases, so many sheets of paper, with twice as many carbons.
You climb in a car and drive west from Washington, over the red fields of Virginia, up the Blue Ridge Mountains, down the Shenandoah Valley, with billboards screaming of limestone caves, up the Appalachians again, with the Great Smokies looming to the south, and down into Tennessee and the Valley of the Tennessee, running yellow with silt. You come to Knoxville, and hard by it the town of Norris and the Norris Dam. Here are filing cases and inter-office memoranda, too, but towering above them is the dam itself, solid and eternal as the temples of Karnak. Its lofty, lovely concrete face is the reality of achievement behind the paper work. Those who strive to help the Valley are not confused. They do not seem to move in circles and spirals; they move, like the profile of their dam, in straight lines. One feels their excitement. It is a very revealing experience to go from Washington to Knoxville. It might be a good idea for Mr. Ickes to build a thundering big dam on the Potomac.
The story runs that one of the TVA staff went north to Ontario to see how the Hydro was functioning. He stopped a farmer on the road and asked him what, after twenty years of experience, he thought of the Hydro.
"I think it's a fine thing."
"Why?"
"Well, stranger, there are a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that it keeps the young folks at home. The smartest ones used to go off to the cities, and now most of them stay on the farms. There is so much right here to interest them."
As we shall see, cheap electric power is not the only function of the TVA, is probably not even the most important function in the long run. The Ontario farmer, however, stated the ultimate goal as well as it can be stated in a phrase. The TVA is an attempt to keep a region viable, healthy, and interesting, and to hold the oncoming generations on their homeland.
One day, with Benton MacKaye and the foresters, I climbed far up on the shoulder of Le Conte, one of the giants of the Great Smokies. Looking west, we saw the great valley unroll before us until it was lost in the mists of the horizon--fields, wood lots, meadow lands, villages, the sparkle of rivers, and the mountain wall around. Fields run high on the mountain slopes. Years ago farmers used to supplement their income by day labor in mines and forests. Such work has largely disappeared. Only the land remains. The cornfields grow steeper, increasing the erosion rate, promoting floods, silting the streams and rivers. More than seven million acres in the Valley are subject to serious erosion.
The peak on which we stood, the splendid forest of hemlock, beech, poplar, and rhododendron through which we had climbed, the tumbled crags to the north, east, and south, were the property of the United States government. A good part of the mountain wall from which the little waters fall to make the tributaries which in turn make the Tennessee is national forest or national park. Nearly five million acres, more than a quarter of all the forest land in the Valley, is government owned. The TVA is thus not an isolated experiment, but yoked with large projects in silviculture and recreation, which preceded it and which serve to protect the Valley's headwaters.
These waters come down from Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and eastern Tennessee in a series of rivers which meet not far from Knoxville to form the main river. This region is tumultuous at the height of land, rugged below with steep cornfields and little farms tucked into the mountain "coves," then rolling land with broader farms, and finally, in the cotton fields of Alabama, almost flat. The elevation descends from 6,000 to 250 feet, giving a climate which ranges from that of the Great Lakes to subtropical. The rainfall is heavy, varying from fifty to eighty inches. The Valley can grow anything which now grows between Canada and the Gulf. It is the perfect laboratory for an experiment in regional planning.
The watershed is shaped like a butterfly with the narrow waist at Chattanooga. The east wing is larger and more rugged, swelling over the eastern part of Tennessee and clipping off segments of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. Here is where the water comes from; here the region of heaviest rainfall. The Powell and Clinch rivers join at Norris Dam, to pour into the Tennessee some. eighty miles below. The Holston and the French Broad' rivers join at Knoxville to form the Tennessee. The little Tennessee comes in from North Carolina below Knoxville, and the Hiawassee River still farther down.
The west wing is the course of these united waters from Chattanooga down into Alabama, over Muscle Shoals where the Wilson Dam was built during the war, and which formed the nucleus of the TVA--across the corner of Mississippi, and then due north through western Tennessee into Kentucky, and finally into the Ohio River at Paducah, not far from where the Ohio pours into the Mississippi at Cairo.
The Tennessee contributes about 20 per cent of the flood waters of the Mississippi. The commingled waters of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee make the spot where they enter the Mississippi one of transcendent importance for flood control. The Valley is a watershed entity, true, but at its mouth it locks into the water economy of the whole Mississippi Basin.
The Valley cuts across seven states--God unfortunately did not consult the Supreme Court--and contains some 40,000 square miles of territory, about four-fifths the area of England. It has a population of nearly two and one-half million people, only a quarter of whom live in cities. More than half the area is forested, but hardly virgin. Nearly all has been cut over, and much of it burned, slashed, and butchered in accordance with sound American practice. There are coal, iron, copper, phosphate, and other minerals in the Valley, and millions of horse-power in-the rush of the rivers. There are a number of factories, but the region as a whole is not industrial It has lived, or bled to live, primarily on its raw resources--forest, pasture, soil, minerals.
If there be such a thing as "native stock," the Valley is peopled with it. This particular strain, however, has a relatively high birth-rate. The youngsters sprawl at the cabin doors, and in Alabama the native stock is often black.
The Valley has tried to live on its natural resources. Yet the average annual cash income of the 4,000 families moved from the Norris reservoir site was under $100. This failed signally to provide the relatively simple wants of the group. Wants have been studied with some care, and include:
| 20 acres of crop land | Plenty of children
|
| A tight five-room house | Some old-fashioned religion
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| 1 horse | 1 radio
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| 1 cow | 1 automobile
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| 1 hog | 1 washing machine
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| Chickens | Access to the movies
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| A reasonable chance for a little neighborly litigation
|
This you will admit is not an exorbitant budget--save possibly on the score of children--but $100 per family, plus the self-subsistence labor of the family, falls far short of it. The people of the upper Valley are hospitable, proud, salty, independent, illiterate by modern standards, and desperately poor. They are poor because many of their ancient crafts have lapsed, and because in the highly specialized economy of today the exchange value of these crafts is low. They do not have enough to exchange with the outside world for the things they need ant want When they do have enough by weight, the price may run so heavily against their raw agricultural products that the exchange ratio remains pitiful.
Here for instance is Grainger County, part of which will be under water when the Norris reservoir fills. Arthur L. Pollard has made a county loss-and-gain account, the first to my knowledge to be prepared in America Here in a few cold figures is the basic problem of America reduced to negotiable proportions.
Grainger County is exclusively agricultural, and nearly everything imported from outside its borders must be exchanged for soil or forest products within. There are no factories to be taxed or to provide employment, no railroads or power lines traversing the area; the people of the county possess no invested wealth in stocks or bonds. Their land and labor form their only wealth. Nor do they own all their land, for many are farm tenants and must pay to outside owners. The county consumes one-third of what it produces, and sells two-thirds to the world beyond. The total cash proceeds of these sales in 1932 amounted to $425,000. The county receives some alien revenue from one large resort hotel, two inns, and two gas stations. There are 1,150 boys and girls from eighteen to twenty-three years of age, of whom seven are in college. There are 900 passenger automobiles and 100 trucks. Residents who have no cars have gone back to carts, and those who have no carts to sledges--for the trade of wheelwright has disappeared. The average farm consists of seventy acres-- twenty plowed, twenty-two in pasture, the rest in wood lot or waste. Such a farm can provide only bare subsistence when worked by the owner under current methods.
The average family is 20 per cent larger than the average for the nation as a whole. At the age of twelve, children begin leaving Grainger County for the world outside. At age twenty-two the proportion of population is less than that of the United States and goes down steadily until a peak deficiency is reached at age thirty-three. Then it begins to climb again, until at age fifty-three it levels the national average. A whole world of tragic maladjustment lies in these figures. The city which has absorbed the youngsters begins to kick them out as middle age approaches. They come drifting back, their youth and vigor gone; sacrificed to no end, except the steady depreciation of their homeland.
Here is Mr. Pollard's balance sheet, somewhat condensed and rearranged:
| Grainger County
|
| Annual Loss and Gain Account, 1932
|
| Income-- | Sales of crops | $425,000
|
| Outside labor | 20,000
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| Tourist income | 20,000
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| Total operating income | $465,000
|
|---|
| Outgo-- | Food purchased | $155,000
|
| Clothing purchased | 140,000
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| Automobile expense | 120,000
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| Machinery, tools, fertilizer | 40,000
|
| Education | 10,000
|
| Miscellaneous expense | 70,000
|
|
|
| Total operating outgo | $535,000
|
|---|
| Interest paid | 85,000
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| Taxes--outside | 20,000
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| Miscellaneous losses | 25,000
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| Depreciation--buildings | 80,000
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| Depreciation--machinery | 20,000
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| Depletion--soil | 55,000
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| Total outgo | $820,000
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|---|
| Deficit of county | $355,000
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|---|
How is this deficit met? It is not met, but is reduced in part by:
| State aid for roads and schools | $60,000
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| Federal aid | 51,000
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| Insurance receipts net | 32,000
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| Total | $143,000
|
|---|
Leaving a net deficit of $212,000.
The county thus keeps going by virtue of state and federal aid, by sinking more deeply into debt, by cumulative depreciation of its agricultural plant, and by cumulative . depletion of its natural resources. Commenting on this study, David Cushman Coyle says: "When income is too small to include repairs, replacements, and fertilizer, civilization is in full retreat." The end of the story cannot be long postponed. Grainger County can give up its motor cars, store clothes, and farm machinery if it must, and live as its forefathers lived--with sledges, tallow candles, and homespun. It can get along without the world beyond iŁ worst comes to worst. But two questions are in order: Can Detroit and International Harvester get along without Grainger County? Why did the native stock leave England and Scotland in 1700 in order to achieve a standard of living in America in 1940 appreciably worse than that of the old country at the time they left?
Grainger County warrants a philosophical digression. I must ask the reader's indulgence, for I cannot discuss the TVA intelligently until it is placed in wider perspective than a series of dams, a net of transmission lines, and a sensible labor policy. The TVA has been called an experiment in regional planning. What does regional planning mean, in the light of Grainger County?
A given community to function must either (1) supply its own essentials, as in handicraft communities, or (2) have something to exchange for its essentials. Otherwise the community has no economic underpinning, and must either die or go on the dole. Grainger County, it appears, supplies less than a third of its essentials at home, and has a very serious shortage of goods and services to exchange for the remaining two-thirds. It is already on the state and federal dole, and is depleting its natural resources at the same time--that is, taking more out of the soil each year than it returns.
In modern times the choice of commodities to exchange offers considerable scope. New York City, in addition to its manufacturing activities, offers banking, brokerage, and gambling services as well as night life and other sophistications in return for the very hearty support in tangible goods shipped in by the rest of the country. Atlantic City exchanges sea air and bathing beauties. Florida exchanges sunshine and dog races; the county seat exchanges trading facilities; Washington exchanges administration and the opinions of nine dignified gentlemen; Reno exchanges divorces; New England, which once exchanged textile manufacturing, turns to recreation; California exchanges vegetables, films, and starry-eyed movements for the regeneration of mankind. All these "services," however, are based on tangible goods in the last analysis. The goods come first in any culture. Only when the stomach is assuaged can one turn to playing the market, astrology, or the fine arts. The tangible goods in turn are all based on natural resources--soil water, and minerals--lodged in that thin crust of the planet between the air belt and the lava belt. The whole economic pyramid, the existence of man on the earth, rests on resources, and without resources collapses.
Meanwhile it is true that in an abundance economy resources are liquid and readily transferable. Nitrogen may be had from the air, with the aid of large infusions of power, as well as from the deposits of Chilean sea fowl. Food may be grown in water baths indoors, as well as from the sail. Houses may be built of glass as well as of wood or brick. For many standard resources substitutes are now available in whole or in part, and more may be expected as technology advances.
It is also true that relatively few communities, strategically located, equipped with plenty of inanimate energy and a variety of automatic or semi-automatic factories and mechanized farms, could theoretically provide the bulk of all essentials for a much wider area. At a guess, under strict engineering control one-fifth of American communities, employing one-fifth of available labor, could furnish the necessities of life for the whole nation. This is the dream of the technocrats, and it is logical if not practicable.
For nearly two hundred years American communities functioned on the basis of self-support with exchange at minimum. As the machine age developed after 1800, communities increasingly specialized, and the exchange ratio grew, aided by new inventions in transportation. They specialized in raw materials, in fabrication of materials, and later in services. This interdependence made for a larger per capita output and on the whole for higher living standards. Even Grainger County obtained its auto-mobiles. But in due time community after community worked through its resources, and the exchange balance went into the red. The lumber barons swept from Maine to Oregon, leaving behind expensive mills, charred and tangled desolation, and town after town with no visible means of support. Mining camps and oil fields grew into towns and cities and became home to hundreds of thousands of Americans. The vein failed or water seeped into the petroleum pool; the resource died. Fishermen's villages, supported by marine life for generations, suddenly found the catch diminishing, because of silt, pollution, slaughtered forests or plain over exploitation with the help of mechanical equipment. And now huge sections of farm land--of which Grainger County is an example--have lost, or are losing, the soil itself owing to erosion, leaching, dust storms, and inability, in a scramble to make ends meet, to put back into the land what the cash crop took out. The city has robbed the farmer by the progressive failure of price parity, and the farmer has robbed the soil. The soil runs thin and gullied.
Many communities, too, have lost their exchange balance by virtue of technological change, population shifts, transportation shifts, shifts in public demand. Consider the stranded coal towns, the shoe workers of Haverhill who have watched the industry drift west, the mill hands of Manchester and Lowell, the hay and oats farmers when gasoline displaced some millions of horses and mules.
It is needless to labor the point. No American communities are today self-sufficient. Community A, which once had exchange values, has them no longer. Community B may have new values, but the people of A have come to call A home. They live on in their ghostly areas, loath to be torn up by the roots. After three centuries of systematic exploitation nature's bins are empty over great areas while the cumulative speed of technological change has rendered other communities barren of the means of livelihood. If the liberty League is to have its way and economic planning is to be taboo, we may confidently expect the situation to worsen at something like a compound-interest rate, until America explodes. Look again at Grainger County. If some degree of conscious foresight is to be the order of the day, three alternatives present themselves:
- Move people out of submarginal and blighted areas and replant them in communities which have a resource base or other exchange medium. This demands a drastic and a psychologically dangerous experiment in planned migration on a vast scale.
- Let the people stay and maintain them on the dole, their only function that of consumers. This is technologically possible--is being carried on to the tune of some millions of individual cases at the present time--but is fantastic from the human point of view. It means maintaining a quarter of the nation, more or less, as a huge charitable asylum.
- Reconstruct the resource tease of those communities where reconstruction is possible. Where it is flatly impossible, planned migration will have to be resorted to. The Resettlement Administration is now trying to work out a technique for the latter. Reconstruction means building up the soil, restoring the forest and grass cover, checking erosion, reconditioning the fisheries, taming the rivers, encouraging wild life and recreation areas, supplying cheap energy, especially from water power, establishing a certain number of new local industries--but not enough to result in wasteful duplication--maintaining a large pro. gram of public works, particularly in the field of conservation to provide local cash income. On these conditions, and only on these conditions, can the people of hundreds of American communities continue to call the homeland, home.
Oust them, feed them, or recondition them--so that they may presently feed themselves. The last makes more sense, politically and psychologically, than the first two. The second makes more engineering sense as efficiency is at a maximum, but psychologically and politically it is valueless.
This is what America faces today, and increasingly tomorrow. The New Deal as a whole is fumbling around with all three policies. The Tennessee Valley Authority is planted solidly on the last: let the Valley people shy in their homes ant recondition the resource base. That is what makes it so important and so human. That is what helps it to move in straight lines rather than spirals. In the next article we shall examine how this policy squares with the Constitution and is being given tangible effect.
