TENNESSEE VALLEY PLAN

Evening Star, Issue 21499, 25 August 1933, Page 12

TENNESSEE VALLEY PLAN

EFFECT ON THE PEOPLE ' The Tennessee Valley Authority, a new sort of super-government created by President Roosevelt, will affect the welfare of millions and the destinies of seven States, from the Cumberlands to the Mississippi. The initial appropriation of 50,000,000d0l for the building of Cove Creek dam and creating a lake reservoir of 831 miles of shore line is but the beginning of a gigantic public expenditure, governmental planning, social and economic control, in which the effort will bo to lift this whole section of the south out of its haphazard, sleepy life into a co-operative Utopia that will become a model for the rest of the nation. In the ‘ Chicago Tribune ’ Philip Kinsley writes of his impressions of the country that is about to be changed. One wakens early in the town of La Folettc, Wisconsin (he writes), what with the bawling of cows in the meadow beyond the hotel window, vociferous roosters, and the tramping and splashing of scores of college boy engineers, who get up at sunrise and start out for the hills with their long brush knives and surveying instruments. It is a cheerful, busy scene, with the natives standing on the street corners and watching “ the government ” come to set its house in order.

A ragged youngster sidles up to the stranger. “ Mister, could you let rue have a dime; we ain’t got a saitch of meal in the house; my pap has been out of a job for four years.” A coloured girl would like another dime. “ Her old man ain’t had no work in two years.” The map shows that this town is on the rim of the great ilood that is coming to these parts, engulfing the town of Loyston completely, covering parts of Jacksboro and Careyville in the fertile Powell Valley, taking the pike and the bridge at Haynardsville where the Union forces camped, changing the face of the country as though a new creation had come.

Preacher Eden, riding around Raccoon Valley on mule back, has a hard time explaining the meaning of it to the flock of Jehovah’s Witnesses Church. The old white church in the valley, where the woodpeckers drum in the long still days and the gravestones droop ever lower in the tall grass, will not be saved either. The waters of a now dam will shine above these graves. MEANS TO STAY.

Five miles away Grandma Siotha Langmire rocks on her porch and looks at the old quiet hills. She will not budge an inch until the Government makes her. Condemnation is coming to her green acres and wooded slopes, and in this peaceful valley will rise dormitories, mess halls, garage, office, pumphouse, filtration and sewage plants, contractors’ office, tool shops, and what not. These acres came to grandma from her great-great-grandfather, who bought the farm in 1821, and Cove Creek dam is nothing but a tragedy to her.

Three thousand tracts are to be taken over by the Government in this vast project' of social planning, covered by such words as “ afforestation, elimination from agricultural use of marginal lands, distribution, and diversification of industry, control of crops and electric power on every farm.” As visioned by the President, “ the Tennessee Valley Authority will be clothed with the power of government, but possessed of the flexibility of initiative of private enterprise, charged with the broadest duty of planning for-proper tise, conservation, and development of the natural resources of the drainage basin and adjacent territory, for - the social and economic welfare of the nation.” Most of the land is in small holdings, come down from the decrees of Andrew Jackson, who once sat as chancellor in this district. The people regard the coming of this new order with some suspicion and unimaginative scepticism. They are eager for the money to come rolling in. Most of them aro willing to part with their farms, and are not greedy about the price. Land values have not appreciated nor felt the thrill of boom. In the towns, however, there is a stiffening of prices. Many strangers have been looking around for locations for new stores. The Chamber of Commerce has built a new road to the dam 'site and sat down to wait for results. La Follette’s ambition is to become the “widest place on the road” in those parts. Rut the watchword is “ No Boom.” They are on the lookout for slick strangers who want to buy up lots in a swamp somewhere around the new lake and unload on innocent preachers and professors. They have been waiting for thirteen years for Cove Creek dam to get through Congress, and can hardly believe their good fortune now. j. Will Taylor, their Congressman, who lives Imre, and is the Republican boss of eastern Tennessee, said after the last election that the only good thing in The Democratic landslide was that it meant the building of the dam. AN OLD TOWN. The town is an old one, settled in early coal discovery days and named after the late Harvey La Follctte, a cousin of the Wisconsin La Follettcs. Senator La Follctte, the elder, used to come down here to see his cousin and once stayed all summer. Grant La Folletto, a brother of Harvey, is still living in the old house, which cost 32,000d0l to build, with the land. The La Follettes were thrifty and farseeing and bought a _ lot of good bottom land, which is still held by Grant. He does not tell his business to strangers, but his friends here understand that ho is ready to “ let it go ” now and sell out for the big industrial development on the way. The name of

the army of workers who will soon encamp down the creek and maybe Philip La Collette, former Governor of Wisconsin, and that of E. A. Lilienthal, Wisconsin public utility director, have been urged for the directorate of the Tennessee valley authority. Since the coal mines have worked only part time and the steel and iron plant shut down, the town of La Toilette has been getting along poorly. Now they are like the old Baptist preacher who had followed a lost cause a long time. The preacher built a church on the street, where there was a row of saloons, lifting the heavy stones and putting them m place himself. He was a powerful man and a good preacher, and drove out all the saloons, and then there wasn’t much else to do.

The town of Coal Creek, down the road a few miles, is nearer the scene of the dam construction and the people there have also built a new road and are waiting for the manna to fall.

“ We never did have anything but hard luck in this town—always a depression,” said one of the leading residents. He recalled the mine explosion of 1902 which killed 189. men; the year of the big ; drought, floods, another explosion, and other: cheerful events. The dam, it seemed, would never get through. But people struggled along. They nover had any inflated ideas about property and getting rich, and so the banker could not recall any foreclosures in the neighbourhood. Now they were getting ready to lead

there will be some jobs left over for the local people. . ■ The cross-roads grocery is the chief institution in these hills here, and the dam is debated up and down every day, with a little help from the Bible, maybe, that lies open on the counter. Good sound Baptists, most of these people, some of them believing in the washing of feet and taking _ part in an annual ceremony of this rite at Hollow Rock Church. It is not far across the Cumberlands to Dayton, scene of the famous evolution trial and the death of William Jennings .Bryant. And nearer still is Pineville, where Theodore Dreiser came nosing into there and making trouble, and they indicted him. Harlan and Bell counties, where the miners have such a hard time under the present system of work and where many have been murdered in hitter Labour Union-com-pany warfare, is close enough, perhaps, to feel the lift of the regeneration of spirit, the new co-operation that is coming to this section. The halfstarved miners should get a new deal, if anyone. It may take more authority than the mighty commission that is to chart the future course here to bring about the spirit of co-operation so desirable and necessary. One of the traditions in these hills is hatred of tho “ revenooers,” and there is the legend of Uncle Billy M'Carthy, over the Kentucky border, who killed twenty-seven of them during his lifetime. A ragged old man who always had.a roll of bills in his pockets. He kept a spy at the mouth of the valley and always knew when the officers entered. Then hiding along the benches with a high-powered rifle. It was easy. And we find the editor of the ‘La Fonlletto Press,’ now a weekly, but with hopes of becoming a semi-weekly, advising ns in the matter of co-opera-tion in building roads' as follows; “ There may come a time when cooperating on a through wood from Middleboro to Knoxville will be beneficial, but at the present time let s take care of ourselves.”