TVA in Arms

After the fall of France last June. TVA's catlike, long-nosed vice chairman, David Eli Lilienthal, made a speech in support of TVA that no reasonable man could quarrel with. Excerpt: "Had the appropriations for the construction of any one of these TVA dams been defeated or delayed, the preparedness program of this nation would be impeded. ..." Defense, originally just a legal excuse for TVA's power policy, is fast becoming its prime concern. Last week Franklin Roosevelt informed Congress of the Defense Advisory Commission's twelve principles for letting defense contracts. One was that contracts should go to companies with adequate power sources, another that defense industries should be decentralized for efficiency and for military reasons (i.e., should be behind mountains if possible). Both pointed to "the Valley" as a good spot for defense plants.

Many plants, defense and otherwise, have already been built in TVA territory. Between 1933 and 1937 industrial growth there (number of plants) was over twice that of the rest of the U. S. Main reasons: cheap and abundant power, the six-foot, 500-mile channel up the Tennessee River. With nearly 1,000,000 kw. in twelve major hydro developments and five big steam plants (of which 300,000 kw. was taken over from private utilities), TVA is already nearly at capacity, must install more (TIME, Aug. 12).

Much of the expansion was forced by TVA's own industrial customers, many of whom are beaver-busy with war orders. Last week TVA customer Vultee Aircraft announced a $9,000,000 expansion at Nashville. Aluminum Co. of America's aluminum sheet (for planes) plant at Alcoa, Tenn. is the only Alcoa sheet plant in a U. S. prime defense area. B. F. Goodrich Co. at Clarksville, Tenn. is making gas-mask parts. Other TVA plants are making gun and shell parts, boilers, airplane fabrics, ferromanganese. Army shoes, blankets, underdrawers, etc. Biggest defense plant in the region will be Tennessee Powder Co. at Memphis, now being built by Du Pont engineers with British money. Of the new ordnance plants planned by the U. S. Army, one will probably be in TVA area.

TVA engineers claim that one-third of the Army's strategic and critical materials are in TVA mountains. To make sure that no TVA assets are overlooked, David Lilienthal keeps a staff of researchers hard at work. Last week he announced that one of them, frail M. I. T. man John Henry Walthall, had developed a new process for extracting alumina (raw material of aluminum) from common clay, which abounds in TVAland. Other TVA discoveries include methods for making a cork insulation substitute out of vermiculite (a mica-like rock), for deriving magnesium from olivine, plastics from cottonseed hulls.

But except for fertilizer (which it makes at Muscle Shoals), TVA does not expect to exploit these resources. Once a gobbler of private utilities, David Lilienthal is now engaged in creating attractions for private capital to come to his Valley. At the same time ("We have obligations to the country as a whole.") he has to avoid acting like a local Chamber of Commerce. The metamorphosis in his character and reputation is locally known as "the dehorning of Dave." Says he nowadays: "I hold no truck with master planning. You can't carry people around. In the first place they don't want it and in the second place if you start it you can't stop."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.