“From the first day of my Administration permanent security was just as much in the front of our minds as the temporary bolstering of banks, the furnishing of immediate jobs and the increase of direct purchasing power. Recovery has come far and with reasonable speed; reform has come less far in the same period of time. But reform is just as important to permanent security in the spring of 1938 as it was in the spring of 1933.”
From the introduction of the second volume of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Public Papers and Addresses”
A Note To Readers
The quote from President Franklin D. Roosevelt above demonstrated his understanding of the immediate measures required to bring people out of the misery of the Depression, a policy that also had to simultaneously lay the basis for long-term progress.
Within months of that President’s inauguration on March 4, 1933, FDR had initiated projects all over the nation, putting people to work and beginning to build the nation’s infrastructure that would play a central role in allowing the nation to become the “arsenal of democracy” it was during World War II.
Those projects, just to name a few, included restarting construction on Hoover Dam, building the Grand Coulee Dam, and the Central Valley Project of California and its many dams and aqueducts. It also included the Civilian Conservation Corps, that over the nine years of its existence, put to work almost 10 million young men in the forests of the nation and even in the cities, building roads, bridges, public libraries and much more. And in 1935, FDR initiated the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). In that year only 10 percent of the farms of the nation had electricity. Most electrical power in the country then was privately owned and the private utilities would not spend the money required to lay the lines to hook up the agricultural sector. The REA provided government loans to coops established in farm communities and by the beginning of the U.S. entry into World War II, almost 40 percent of the farms had electricity, dramatically increasing farm productivity and freeing up manpower for the war factories in the cities and for the military. By 1951, over 90 percent of the farms were electrified.
The center piece of all these projects was the Tennessee Valley Project (TVA).
The TVA, established at the trough of the U.S. economic collapse in May 1933, built a series of 20 dams in less than 20 years to control flooding and expand navigation on the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The program introduced electricity to virtually every farm and household in an area spanning seven states, developed improved fertilizers and advanced agricultural methods, and introduced health care and literacy to a population not very different, at that time, from many less developed nations today.
Internationally, the TVA gave hope and optimism for the future to hundreds of millions of people, especially in nations which had only recently won their independence at the end of World War II.
According to then-TVA head David Lilienthal writing in 1954, representatives of nearly every nation
in the world had visited the TVA over its first 20 years. These included Prime Minister David Ben Gurion of Israel, and officials from many Arab countries.
Here are a couple of videos on the TVA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgFxtmiHQ2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoEXrYfy6wY
Today, the equivalent to FDR’s policy has found its home in China. China has not only studied the TVA, but has used its lessons to build the Three Gorges Dam and the greatest water management system in the world today, the Move South Water North project. More than that, the TVA is the model used by China in its massive Belt and Road Initiative of building infrastructure all over the world.
Some comments on this are in the last item of the report: ‘Tennessee Valley Authority Imperialism.’
A final note on this topic: As has been reported, more than 125 million trees in California have died over the last few years due to drought and bark beetle infestation. These trees are now providing the easily noncombustible fuel for wild fires. Perhaps a modern CCC program to put a few 10s of thousands of unemployed youth to work clearing the forests is now an appropriate measure. And like the original CCC program, they can work half a day and go to school and learn skills the other half.
In This Week’s Report
The report is very short this week, which gives myself and you the reader a little break.
We begin with the U.S. Drought Monitor which once again shows little or no increased intensity of the drought. Though we should be clear, the state is in a drought.
The Oroville Dam Update has several items on construction progress.
Then there is a commentary on the Huntington Beach desalination plant.
The report concludes with the TVA and China item.
