The Board of Administrators
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A three-member board directed TVA: Arthur Morgan, Harcourt Morgan, and David Lilienthal. Each had very different ideas about the direction TVA could and should take. A battle between the three administrators went on from 1933 until March, 1938, when Arthur Morgan was fired (See Cartoons ).

Arthur Morgan, the former president of Antioch College, was an advocate of social planning who saw in TVA an opportunity to build a cooperative relationship between government and business. He wanted to keep rates at a comparative level to avoid alienating private industry. Morgan believed the higher purpose of TVA was to eliminate poverty in the Tennessee Valley, and to serve as a model for national regional planning. He had strongly-held anticapitalist, communitarian values, but was often accused of holding paternalistic and authoritarian positions.

Harcourt Morgan, the only Southerner on the board, was an advocate for southern commercial farmers and was suspicious of experiments in government planning.

David Lilienthal was an outspoken advocate of public power, who wanted TVA to compete directly with private power interests.

In 1938 Harcourt Morgan became the new head of the Authority, followed in 1941 by Lilienthal. By 1941 TVA had become the largest producer of electrical power in the United States.