RECENT ROOKS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 102, 27 October 1945, Page 9

RECENT ROOKS

STORY OF T.V.A.

GOSPEL OF DEMOCRACY

(By Q.)

In the twelve years that have elapsed since, in 1933, an Act of the United States Congress, sponsored by the late President Roosevelt and Senator Norris, created the Tennessee Valley Authority, a whole Hteratwre has grown up about the project and iits progress, the greatest of its kind, and itself in many respects unique, until there must be few people anywhere now who have not heard of the T.V.A. The best story of this monumental, but living, work, that of David Lilientbal, one of the three directors appointed by President Roosevelt at the initiation of the scheme and now chairman of the Authority, was published last year and has now been issued as a Penguin Special.

There is very much more inrthis record of ten years' achievement in the Tennessee' Valley than engineering construction, even if that is on the most magnificent scale. If, in this respect, there have been few, if any, greater works anywhere in the world in all history, that is,1 after all, a question of degree; The war just over has proved that almost nothing is impossible to the energy and resources of the United States and its people. The outstanding example is, of course, the development of the atomic bomb —partly in the T.V.A. region—at a cost exceeding that of any other single scheme carried out by Americans even in the Tennessee Valley itself. What is specially emphasised in David- Lilienthal's account of the work, in which he has played so great a part, is not so much the magnitude of the job as the manner in which it was carried out and the method by which it operates as a going concern. It is in this respect, above all others, that it is, in the true sense of the word, unique at present, but, as a successful experiment, likely in future to be followed as an example elsewhere.

REAL DEMOCRACY.

The title of Mr. Lilienthal's book is "T.V.A.: DEMOCRACY ON THE [MARCH," and it is the democratic [operation of the T.V.A., explained in the latter half of the book, that will impress most readers as an achievement even more important for mankind than the twenty-one dams on the Tennessee River system, controlling the river and furnishing electricity for the entire region and beyond its bounds. It was a realisation of this importance that induced a public-spirited citizen of Hamilton, Mr. Harry Valder, well known for his employee-partnership scheme, long in successful operation, to order a thousand copies of "T.V.A." from the Penguin headquarters in London and arrange for their free distribution among members of Parliament and other public bodies and institutions in New Zealand, including the new Regional Councils, under the National Development Scheme, and the Press.

RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENT.

In a leaf inserted in these gift copies Mr. Valder, with whom are associated as signatories Mr. J. S. Hunter, director, Organisation for National Development, Wellington, and Professor Leslie Lipson, Professor of Political Science, Victoria University College, says*

This is the record of one of the outstanding social achievements of our time, as told by its director. Sponsored in large part by the late President Roosevelt, the T.V.A. has been successful in rehabilitating a depressed region of the United States containing four-fifths of the area of New Zealand and three times our population. Plans similar to the T.V.A. have already been proposed in Congress for other regions of the United States, and the British Cabinet has i proclaimed its decision to adopt T.V.A. methods: In approaching the problems of post-war reconstruction in New Zealand and planning ahead for future national development, we should all learn from the experience of the T.V.A. and apply to this Dominion those of its lessons and principles which are transferable. METHODS EMPLOYED.

x_Som?r ? f the methods employed by the T.V.A., though unusual, if not unique, in America, are not new to this country. Great works in America, like the Boulder and Grand Coulee JJams, have in nearly every instance been undertaken by private contractors or groups of firms sharing in 'the contract. Henry J. Kaiser made his name m such huge constructional contracts. The Panama Canal was built by the United States military engineers. The T.V.A. has carried out its immense dam construction and allied works with its own teams of workers who_ shift from job to job in succession as each is completed.' They n°^ t$ us correspond with our Public Works employees, except that these work directly for a Government Department, whereas the TV.A. teams are not directed from Washington but from T.V.A. headquarters, wherever they happen to be at the time. -_Af£ m „there is a similarity between the T.V.A. system of electricity supply and distribution and ours, the Authority wholesales the current and various local authorities, including cooperative associations, see-to the distribution; in New Zealand the hydroelectric branch of the Public Works Department sees to the generation and supply of bulk current and leaves the distribution to. publicly-elected power boards, for the different regions. New Zealand's system was in operation 10 years before the T.V.A. came into being, and remains today fully in harmony with T.V.A. principles and methods—an example of democratic working of a vital function of the community. This illustrates a method which the T.V.A. has extended in every direction."

UNITY IN DEVELOPMENT.

n™?. T-V.A. plan deals with what Mr. Lihenthal calls "resource development," in which there must be unity, so that the development, or exploitation, of one resource does not, as it often has done, injure the development of the others. Examples in the T.V.A region are cited. But, in chapter 9, entitled "Democracy at the Grass Roots: For the People and by the People," he declares:

_ People are the most important fact in resource development. Not only are the welfare and happiness of individuals its true purpose, but they are the means by which that development is accomplished; their genius, their energies, and spirit are the instruments; it is not only "for the people," but "by the people" . . . The people must be on the job. . . From the outset of the T.V.A. undertaking it has been evident to me, as to many others, that a valley development envisioned in its entirety could become a reality if and only if the people of the region did much of the planning and participated in most of the decisions.

PEOPLE MUST BE IN ON JOB

How this principle of T.V.A. operation, letting the people do the work of administration—"government by the people"—bringing the expert and technician into full contact with the layman, replacing "remote control" by "decentralisation" ("the decentralised adminstration of centralised authority") succeeds in practice is the main theme of the latter half of the book where it is expounded by the author with the. vigour of a gospel and a wide variety of example. The tendency in almost every country certainly in America and also in New Zealand, is for centralised bureaucracy to increase to the detriment of democracy. As Arthur Koestler puts it, "people grow under the burden of their responsibilities and shrink if the burden is taken from them" The T.V.A. Plan is to give the average citizen of the community responsibility for some part of the jobf "the people must be in on the planningtheir existing institutions must be pairof it; self-education of the citizenry is more important'than specific projects or physical changes." This is the mesage of Mr. Lilienthal's story of the T.V.A a message to the whole world, not least to countries like Australia and New Zealand, which have their own problems of erosion by wind or water. If the people who live on the spot can be enlisted in the work of rehabilitation, as was done and is being done in the Tenne^PP Valley region by the T.V.A., it will bi more than half the battle. For this reason Mr. Valder's enterprise in introducing the. book to a wide circle of the public in New Zealand is a matter for public gratitude.