Souvce SociaI Fovces, VoI. 28, No. 4 |Ma, 1950), pp. 435-440 FuIIisIed I OxJovd Univevsil Fvess SlaIIe UBL http://www.jstor.org/stable/2572255 . Accessed 29/09/2014 0903 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 74.217.196.131 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:03:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions IMPACT OF TVA UPON THE SOUTHEAST 435 THE IMPACT OF TVA UPON THE SOUTHEAST* WILLIAM E. COLE University of Tennessee A NY attempt to appraise the impact of the Tennessee Valley Authority upon the Southeast will of necessity be partial and not, as one would wish, highly objective. There are several reasons for this. There does not exist an over-all comprehensive socio-economic backlog study of the Valley made at the inception of TVA against which change may be measured. The lack of an equivalent of Southern Regions' for the Tennessee Valley, as of 1935, is most uhfortunate. TVA, in its eagerness to cooperate with Valley agencies, and not to duplicate their areas of work and jurisdiction, has left much record keeping and research to these agencies. This was notably true in agriculture where the responsibilities for records on unit test demonstration farms and on area demonstrations became a college responsibility. As a result the data with which one has to work frequently lack a central core of uniformity which would furnish the basis for charting changes on test demonstration farms and in demonstration areas for the Valley as a whole. TVA and the col- leges recognize the problems of lack of uniformity in data and are now proceeding to correct it. For reasons inherent in social change itself, both in charting change and the assignment of causes to change, much difficulty is involved. As MacIver, in his discussion on "The Quest for a Specific Why" says, "Many dynamic factors melt, focus, clash and cooperate in the shaping of the pattern" of change.2 To this difficulty is added the fact that TVA's operations, aside from construction, power development, and flood control in the river chan- nel, are largely cooperative with other agencies. Any attempt, therefore, in these cooperative pro- gram operations to gauge the contributions of one agency, as against those of another, is, for the most part, impossible. It is, therefore, in the light of these limitations, that we have to ask what has been the impact of TVA upon the Southeastern Region, and particularly the Seven Valley States of the region? First, TVA has been an important factor in the regional identification of the Southeast. By re- gional identification I mean the sense of unity, importance and confidence which the people in the Southeast have or which the 5,850,000 people (1946 estimate) in the 212 County TVA Water- shed and power service area have. This is not the same as regional snobbishness. We of the South- east have never been able to boast that we had a region with "books on the slope of Beacon Hill," when the "wolves howled" in the wilderness.' The Southeast has been on the defensive a long time and still is. It was dubbed "Economic Prob- lem No. 1" and perhaps properly so. Its sociologists have often felt it necessary to explain "The Way of the South," not only for our own cultural under- standing, but also for export. We were well on the way toward getting an inferiority complex and this was doubly so in the depression of the thirties -even Democracy had an inferiority complex, as the iron heels of Europe were on the march. Since 1933, more than 20 million people have come into the Valley to see TVA projects. In Europe we are told TVA is the most discussed American enterprise, rivaled of course by atomic energy. Thus it is that to the Southeast and to the Nation "the Tennessee Valley has come to sym- bolize the idea of evolutionary change,"4 a change toward the improvement and better utilization of resources, toward a better balanced economy with higher incomes from more secure sources, and a higher standard of living buttressed by better tools and knowledge for making a living. This record of substantial accomplishment by an enterprise, which is part of the South, has been a factor in bolstering the South's morale and has added a tangible element of regional identification. It constitutes a concrete demonstration that plan- * Adapted from a paper read before the twelfth annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Knoxville, Tennessee, April 1, 1949. 1 Howard W. Odum, Southern Regions of the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936). 2 R. M. MacIver, Social Causation (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1942), p. 133. 3 Committee on Regional Planning, Yale University, A Case for Regional Planning with Special Reference to New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), p. 39. 4 David E. Lilienthal, TVA: Democracy on the March (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), p. mi. This content downloaded from 74.217.196.131 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:03:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 436 SOCIAL FORCES ning is compatible with democracy; that the re- sources of the South can be developed and renew- able resources rebuilt and used in the interest of the people; that the Southeast has many natural ad- vantages-chief of which are rainfall, climate and mineral and soil resources, and that the production patterns of the South's agriculture may be re- arranged. From this has come a confidence that the job of Southern resource development is not only possible but practicable. One community leader appraised this confidence as follows. We can write of great dams... of the building of home-grown industry and of electricity at last coming to the farms of thousands of farm people in the Valley, yet the significant advance has been made in the think- ing of the people. They are no longer afraid. They have caught the vision of their own powers.5 Regional identification is particularly strong among the farmers, power consumers, power dis- tributors and others closely associated with TVA program activities. This sense of belonging to the region, of being affected by it, of having a part of its development has been a major factor in the political strength of TVA, and has not been con- fined to any single political party. In addition to geographical features and natural and institutional resources, it is important in democratic regional development that the people have a "collective self consciousness" necessary to sustain the individual and collective demands which are made upon them.6 No matter what the resources of a region are, the people must have the will to develop them. Identification is important in developing such a will. Probably the greatest single social impact of TVA upon the Southeast has been its contributions to the theory and practice of balanced develop- ment. Balance is both a philosophy and a technique and TVA has contributed to both.7 The problem of balance has long been a concern of the sociologists of the South. Odum and Moore develop strongly the theory that regionalism is the key to balance and equilibrium. They point out through a quotation from Mumford that, "Such equilibrium is needed not only between and among the several diversified areas of the nation, but between industry and agriculture, between urban and rural life, and between and among the various groups of people who constitute the democracy, since the aim of that democracy is to offer not only each individual but each democratic group full opportunity and representation."8 They indicate furthermore that regionalism "offers a medium and technique of decentralization and redistribu- tion."9 Vance refers to the unbalanced man-land ratios of the Southeast,'0 to the need for a better balance between food, feed, and staple crops and to the improvements made in the direction of ob- taining this balance. He relates also to the fact that the Southeast has lagged behind the Nation in the ratio of producers to consumers.11 The im- balance in age groups, incomes, and between the carrying loads of institutions and resources, is re- peatedly pointed out by the sociologists, the econ- omists, and educators. Now the thing that was unique about the legis- lation giving birth to TVA was not the fact that it was a government corporation, nor the novelty of the tasks it was expected to do, but the fact that it was a regional agency characterized as follows: A federal autonomous agency, with authority to make its decisions in the region. Responsibility to deal with resources, as a uniform whole, clearly fixed in the regional agency, not divided among several centralized federal agencies. A policy, fixed by law, that the federal regional agency work cooperatively with and through local and state agencies.2 As Lilienthal states: TVA was created for the job of developing the re- sources of a single region as a whole. The limits of its responsibilities were fixed by the boundaries of nature, a watershed and its adjacent area."3 He indicates further that its Charter recognizes the unity of nature. Dr. H. A. Morgan, perhaps the greatest exponent of balance in TVA, in answer to bDavid E. Lilienthal, The Tennessee Valley: A Story of Change. Address before the Cleveland (Ohio) City Club, March 23, 1946 (mimeographed). 6 Committee on Regional Planning, Yale University, 1947, op. cit., p. 39. 7 Howard W. Odum and Harry E. Moore, American Regionalism (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1938), pp. 3-34. 8 Ibid., p. 9. 9 Ibid., pp. 3-4. 10 Rupert B. Vance, All These People (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1945), pp. 472-73. 11 Ibid., pp. 59-62. 12 David E. Lilienthal, TVA: Democracy on the March, p. 153. 13 David E. Lilienthal, The Tennessee Valley, A Story of Change, p. 17. This content downloaded from 74.217.196.131 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:03:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions IMPACT OF TVA UPON THE SOUTHEAST 437 "What is a watershed?" defined it as an organism -a complex but unified composite of life systems. As Vance points out: More than anything else the future of the Southeast depends upon the development of resources and capaci- ties that are as yet largely unrealized. The region has natural resources and human resources. The forms of wealth are primary, but for their development they depend upon the building up of technological resources, institutional resources and capital resources.14 The concept of balance then appears to involve the development of an environment that gives the greatest use of human skills compatible with the resource base: which offers alternative opportuni- ties and which tries to preserve and perpetuate the best of the value and cultural systems of both rural and urban peoples. If there is wide range of alter- natives for choice of place to live, of jobs, of free- dom to move and to adjust, people to a remarkable degree will affect an ecological balance. Now in what ways have the joint program oper- ations of TVA contributed to this balance and to this diversity of opportunity? I believe in four respects: A. Through its fertilizer production and joint agri- cultural development programs, TVA has pointed the way to the achievement of a balanced program of agriculture in the Southeast, particularly the corn producing and upland cotton areas. The keys of this program have been the im- provement of managerial skills, in a soil rebuilding and soil use program, which makes the maximum use of climatic and water factors, plus the addition of mineral plant food elements-especially phos- phates-to the soil, along with lime as a condition- ing element. While the fertilizer and agricultural programs are nationally significant, reaching a cumulation of 64,00016 unit and area test demonstration farms throughout the country, they are peculiarly southem in significance. On the 3,332 active unit test demonstration farms and the 17,835 currently active area demon- stration farms,'6 the specialists, county agents and farmers are indicating how, under diverse southern conditions, soil fertility may be rapidly restored; how agricultural production may be adjusted to varying conditions of slope and to the very com- plex matrix of 1,200 soil types found in the Valley area; how through the use of lime and phosphate humus and nitrogen may be added to the soil; how small grains may be substituted for corn; how more cotton and tobacco may be grown on fewer units of land, thus freeing acres for other use; how with summer pasture and small grains for winter pasture, livestock and dairying may be added to the farm production program, and how these cash crops may be further diversified through the pro- duction of improved fruits, vegetables and numer- ous specialty crops, and finally, how many of these products may be processed for marketing close at home. Are not these trends in the direction of the solution of the Southeast's agricultural problems insofar as the forces governing regional agriculture may be directed through effort below the federal plane? In this economy corn and cotton are not being given up, although about a million acres have been shifted out of row crops since 1935. The upland cotton farms, through diversification and changing the character of production, are escaping some of the competition that they must eventually face from the delta and flatland mechanized cotton areas. Between 1935 and 1945 farm tenancy in the Valley declined 38 percent as compared with a de- crease of less than 25 percent in the Nation. In fact in 1945 the proportion of tenancy was lower in the Valley counties than in the Nation. These contributions then to the agriculture of the Southeast are in the direction of a more bal- anced agriculture-better balance between what goes into the land and what comes out; a better balanced selection of products to sell and products to eat, more opportunities for diversification, for choice and adaptation, and, as a result, not only a protective but a productive agriculture. B. Through its forestry relations and wild life pro- grams, which are carried out in cooperation with State and Federal agencies and with the owners of farm timberlands and commercial tracts, TVA has demonstrated the very great potentialities which lie in forestry and wild life development for a better balanced economy in the Southeast and, 14 Vance, op. cit., p. 476. 15 The cumulative total of. UTD farms established to January 1, 1949 was 26,555 of which 11,191 were in the Valley. The number of area farms totaled 38,111 of which 37,397 were in the Valley. Up to January 1, 1949, 299,499.61 tons of fertilizer materials had been distributed in the Valley and 145,348.43 tons outside the Valley. 16 As of January 1, 1949. This content downloaded from 74.217.196.131 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:03:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 438 SOCIAL FORCES furthermore, has indicated concrete ways through which these potentialities may be realized. Our remarks on the above point will be limited to forestry since space will not permit a treatment of the all-year round recreation tourist and recrea- tional possibilities of impounded reservoirs. Cer- tainly, also, the folkways of the sportsmen and the wildlife experts were upset, agreeably so, by the "no dosed-season-no-stocking" policies on TVA lakes. Rainfall and climatic factors give the Southeast tremendous possibilities and advantages in timber production which should in time rapidly do away with the imbalances and some of the problems of timbered-out areas. Through 27 industrial, invest- ment, municipal, and institutional forest manage- ment demonstrations, including a half million areas of forest land, and through 266 farm wood- land demonstrations,'7 reforestation and improved cutting practices are pointing the way to per- petual timber crop yield without stand impair- ment. Equally important is the demonstration that timber is a good farm crop, as important to many farms as any other crop. Through organized fire control which has been extended to 42 counties and to 5,598,000 acres since 1933, a major obstacle to full development of forest resources in the Valley is being improved. Through improved planting techniques and thin- ning procedures, new insect control measures, fertilization studies, reservoir margin plantation studies, forest influence investigations and research in forest products utilization, new information and new procedures on forestry resource development and utilization of immense significance to the restoration and full development of renewable resources in the Southeast is being made. C. TVA, through its developmental and industrial program operations, is setting in motion a series of changes which is resulting in not only a more adequate regional economy but a better balanced economy. Aside from the agrarianists, who "took their stand" somewhat unsuccessfully, most regional sociologists and economists have long stressed the need for improved income base and a better bal- ance between sources of income than the Southeast has had in the past. They have, furthermore, stressed the need for developing this balance out of existing regional resources and without dislocating the economics of other regions. TVA, through its uniform power rate policies, through emphasis upon the unified development of the region with the aid of the natural, human, and institutional resources of the region, is demonstrating how an improved economic balance may be effected. In 1929 there were 49 industrial workers per 1,000 population in the Tennessee Valley, in 1947 there were 80, as compared to the Nation's 107. In 1933, 15 counties in the Valley were without manufacturing plants, but by 1947 plants were re- ported in all counties. Between 1940 and June 1948, 1,448 new manufacturing and processing plants were added to the Tennessee Valley and the area supplied by TVA power. Of these only 9 were originally located outside the Valley and moved in.18 In the 18-months period, prior to June 30, 1948, 389 new plants were established. The changes in sources of income in the Ten- nessee Valley also indicate an improved balance in income sources. Keeping in mind the differences in bases in 1929, between 1929-47 wages and sala- ries in the Tennessee Valley increased 255.9 percent in the Valley as compared with 127.1 percent for the Nation. In 1929 employees in the Valley re- ceived 0.82 percent of the Nation's wages and salary payments but by 1947 this had increased to 1.28 percent. Between 1929-47 proprietors' income from farms and unincorporated private business enter- prises increased 204 percent in the Valley as com- pared to 180.2 in the Nation. During the same period income from property increased 102.8 per- cent in the Valley as compared to 30.2 percent in the Nation. From 1929 to 1933 the average per capita income in the Valley was about 40 percent of the national average. By 1945 this had increased to 60 percent of the national average and re- mained at 60 percent through 1947. In terms of dollars these data mean that in 1945 the income of the people in the Valley was $680 million more than the income would have been had the average per capita income continued to be only 40 percent of the national average as it was in 1933.19 Now, these balances are being achieved without excessive urbanization of the population-an im- portant achievement according to most proponents of balance. In the first place one-third of the 1,448 17 Tennessee Valley Authority, Division of Forestry Relations, Annual Report, 1948, pp. 2-4. 18 Data from Industrial Economics Branch, Division of Regional Studies, Tennessee Valley Authority. 19 Data from Industrial Economics Branch, Division of Regional Studies, Tennessee Valley Authority. This content downloaded from 74.217.196.131 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:03:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions IMPACT OF TVA UPON THE SOUTHEAST 439 new manufacturing plants locating in the Tennes- see Valley and areas supplied by TVA power between 1940 and 1948 located in open country and places of less than 5,000 population, another third in places between 5,000 and 100,000, and another third in cities of over 100,000 population.20 While electric power at low rates is only one of a dozen or so items attractive to industries, the uni- form power rates throughout the Valley are with- out a doubt a factor facilitating the wide distribu- tion of industry. Furthermore, electricity is a flexible source of power as compared with less mo- bile forms, thus making it possible to be used economically in small units. D. Another factor contributing to the balanced de- velopment of the Tennessee Valley is rural elec- trification. The electric power service and watershed area of TVA now covers 212 counties. In 1933, 3.5 per- cent of the farms in the TVA power area were electrified. By December, 1949, about 75 percent of the farms were electrified; farmers of the area were using 50 times as much electricity as they used in 1933 and the average farm consumer using more than three times as much in 1948 as in 1933. At the close of 1949 fiscal year, local municipal and cooperative systems had plans to construct 25,000 miles of new rural lines which will add 135,- 000 new rural customers.2' TVA's electric rate structure has significance for southern regional development. We may use residenitial rates as a case in point. At the time that resale rates were established, the idea prevailed that increased use of electricity had to precede rate reductions. TVA's resale structure was built on the principle that a drastic reduction in rates would stimulate use of power-a fact particularly sig- nificant in a low income area. The wisdom of this policy is clear. Low rates are good business as indi- cated by the fact that the average residential use per customer in the TVA area increased from 600 kilowatt hours in 1933 to 2,500 in 1948. A sig- nificant fact in spite of the fact that many new customers tend at first to use little current thus holding down the average. The average annual use for the United States, however, was 1,505 kilo- watt hours.22 It is impossible to assess the social impact of rural electrification made possible through TVA, in cooperation with REA. Its contributions to bring- ing into better balance the rural-urban differential must have been considerable. The inferiority feel- ings of rural people were enhanced by the fact that the cities had electricity and they did not. Elec- tricity has had an effective role in stimulating com- munity organization and cooperation, in encour- aging small industry, in decreasing drudgery, in improving food care, and without a doubt in mak- ing the rural regions more attractive to rural youth. Despite some excellent examples of community organization and development in the Southeast, the most significant community development movement in the Nation is taking place in the Tennessee Valley area. This has been largely the outcome of the area-demonstration work carried on as a joint undertaking by TVA, the land-grant colleges and the farmers, and aided, recently, by the community improvement contests, which have reached some 600 communities during the past four years. Up to January 1, 1950, over 600 area demon- strations-containing as a rule 30 to 200 farms each and involving in all 37,785 farms with 3,965,110 acres had been established in the Tennes- see Valley. Some 17,835 farms are still active in these area demonstrations.23 Whereas TVA unit test demonstration farms have been widely dis- tributed throughout the Nation, area demonstra- tions have been almost completely limited to the Valley as part of the water control program on the land. For the most part these are found on minor watersheds where flooding and erosion are prob- lems. From area demonstrations and area organiza- tions which are at first limited to receiving and using TVA fertilizer materials, supplemented by lime and other fertilizer supplements, and to erosion control and other improved land use prac- tices, have developed dozens of communities with active community organizations working in the direction of general community improvement. Where only areas-minor watersheds-trouble spots on the land existed, today full fledged com- munity areas, cutting across school areas and neighborhoods in many instances, are found. 20 Data from Industrial Economics Branch, Division of Regional Studies, Tennessee Valley Authority. 21 Annual Report of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1948, pp. 90-92. 2JIbid., p. 94. 23 Data from Agricultural Development Section, Test Demonstrations Brancb, Agricultural Relations Division, TVA. This content downloaded from 74.217.196.131 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:03:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 440 SOCIAL FORCES Existing community areas were not neglected in setting up area demonstrations but the facts are that most of the areas did not contain communities or were not part of communities. The possibilities of establishing communities from natural areas is a significant contribution from these communities, as are also their methods or organization and records of accomplishment. The most important thing is what has happened to the people them- selves. As one community leader phrased it: We are a warmer community, we are closer together, we are happier. In fact there is no word in Webster's dictionary that can describe the power such clubs as ours have to bring families closer together. Formerly there was a lot of stand-offish feeling between people of different churches. But now that the whole com- munity has helped to beautify our four churches that feeling has disappeared. We can do things now that didn't use to be possible.24 Space will not permit one to discuss the impact of other phases of TVA and its cooperative pro- grams upon the Southeast. Within range of dis- cussion are malaria control, the development of an excellent employee health program, the coopera- tive stream sanitation program, the industrial health and safety program, and the community assistance programs designed to aid small towns and cities in their planning and operational activi- ties. These programs have all been documented and reported upon from time to time. There is still, as Chairman Gordon Clapp indi- cates, much "unfinished business" in the Tennessee Valley.25 The per capita income of the Valley is only about 60 percent of the national average; there are still acute problems of soil erosion and human erosion; a substantial number of farms are still to be electrified; States need to apply more fully the fertilizer and agricultural test demonstra- tion experiences of the Valley counties to non- valley counties rather than to treat Valley agri- culture as distinct from non-valley agriculture; private enterprises and business corporations need to realize more fully the useful data, studies, and opportunities which are now available; need to understand better the role of TVA in their lives, and the colleges and schools need to aid them in making this interpretation. More than anything else the South and the Nation need to utilize the constructive experiences of TVA. It is part of the South but, more important, part of the Nation with many contributions to make to the Nation. TVA's experience in regional development has demonstrated, as Odum and Moore said, "a media and technique of decentralization and distribution in an age being characterized as moving toward over-centralization, urbanism and totalitarian- ism."26 Although this was written in 1938, it is good today, and TVA has proved this prediction. 24 Winifred Raushenhush, "Farmers Join Hands for a Better Life," Survey Gr-aphic, 37: 244-249 (May 1948). 25 Gordon Clapp, Unfinished Business in the Ten- nessee Valley, July 19, 1948 (mimeographed). 26 Odum and Moore, op. cit., pp. 3-4. SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL FACULTY RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS Faculty research fellowships to help young college faculty members, selected for their out- standing research ability, to do original work in the social sciences have been announced by the Social Science Research Council. A grant of $465,000 has been received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to finance the fellowship program for a five-year period. According to Dr. Pendleton Herring, president of the Council, these fellowships are (lesigned to enable young social scientists with exceptional research ability to advance their research activi- ties early in their teaching careers and will provide substantial financial aid for approximately three years. In each case, financial cooperative arrangements will be worked out with the recipi- ent's college or university so he will be relieved of half his teaching duties in order to do sustained research. Fellowships will be awarded each year to a total of seven men and women, not over 35 years of age, chosen from the whole range of the social science faculties in American colleges and uni- versities in all parts of the country. Only a single appointment will be made at a given institution in any one year. A representation from different types of colleges and universities in all parts of the country will be sought. The Council hopes to award the first Faculty Research Fellowships for the academic year, 1950-51. Detailed information on these fellowships may be obtained from Elbridge Siblev, executive associate of the Council, at its Washington office, 726 Jackson Place, N. W. This content downloaded from 74.217.196.131 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 09:03:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions