TVA As A New Zealander Saw It

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 362, 31 May 1946, Page 8

TVA As A New Zealander Saw It

Massive Project a Storm-centre of Controversy

O many New Zealanders the letters TVA, MVA and CVA -Tennessee, Missouri, and ‘Columbia Valley authorities — are no more than further additions to the rash of alphabetical symbols ‘dotting the pages. of American magazines. To Norman Lamont, of the Department of Agriculture in Christchurch, they represent in TVA’s case (with the other two yet to be developed) one of the world’s most important ventures in river control, power supply. and irrigation. And he should know, for he has just come back from visiting the United States to inspect them. ~ "Democracy is far more than a catchword with most Americans. Not only do they believe in it completely, but they do their best to practise it," Mr. Lamont said, to a Listener interviewer. Government servants believed in it, and exercised it at times when they could, if they had wished, have taken refuge in the authority vested in them by their jobs. He gave an example. "Around their dams the TVA had a number of small patches. of land-the -unflooded remnants of farms they had bought because the area was to be ‘flooded, These bits and pieces, amounting in all to a tidy piece of land, represented valuable little farmlets.

"They belonged to TVA, and TVA had the sole right of disposing of them. They gave the use of them to the owners of near-by farms. But the choice of who got them was a matter for the farmers themselves. TVA got together a small committee of district farmers, sent one or two of its own men along, and the land was distributed on the basis suggested by the farmers themselves. The farmers would meet and say that ‘one good little piece of, say, 20 acres should go to Bill Jones. He was farming a near-by property and could easily work the new section, and, what was more, he was a man who took good care of his land, and kept to the soil conservation principles so dear to TVA’s collective heart. Therefore he got it, and on the recommendation of his neighbours. That was democracy in genuine practice." Criticism was of course still directed against what TVA had done in Tennessee, but most of this, it seemed te Mr. Lamont, was circulated to weaken the prospects of the next similar scheme -the Missouri Valley authority, which was on a much bigger scale: The propaganda for both sides was very skilful. Sometimes it was a little reckless. For instance, travelling once in a bus, Mr. Lamont was a little disturbed to see a huge front-page headline, "Totalitarianism Marches On." It

didn’t march very far on the front page, but on an inside page there were a whole eight columns of .anti-TVA stuff. Irrigation and Nayigation Many of the opponents of TVA were opponents mainly for the purpose of preventing the similar and much bigger authority from beginning in Missouri, Mr. Lamont thought. In Tennessee the authority had not had the opposition to face that would be met in the huge Missouri river area, which went almost through to Canada. That was because the Missouri scheme would put much emphasis on irrigation, and thus come in conflict with the big river navigation interests. "If you take water for power, you can put it back and still use rivers for navigation purposes," Mr. Lamont said. "The dams you use for hydro-electricity can well serve the purpose of dams for river locks. But when you take water for irrigation, it is gone for good. You can’t put it back." However, as well as those who opposed the Missouri Valley scheme because they were interested parties, there wére many others who opposed it on the grounds that it meant too much centralising of power and control in Washington. America was a huge place, and the people of the West considered they could provide all the irrigation and

How the United States looks to a Tennessee Valley New Deal Dreamer floating on a pink cloud of phantasy.

power schemes they wanted by their own unaided, inter-State efforts, rather than by handing the problem to experts from Washington, and having it done for them. It was another side to their democracy, and this opposition to control by one huge authority (as one to control the Missouri Valley would have to be, for the Missouri runs through several States) even came from those who would most benefit from the plan even from University graduates, engi. neers, and the like, to whom it would give jobs. Attitude of Farmers The attitude of farmers towards these irrigation schemes in general was like the attitude of most farmers to most farming innovations-if it meant more profit they were for it. These river control authorities on the model of TVA did much useful work in the way of flood control, Mr. Lamont added. Other State agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Engineering Corps (which did an immense amount of work) alsq added a big quota to the total of’ Federal-con-trolled work. America was a difficult country to get to know because of its very bigness, Mr. Lamont concluded, and it was particularly difficult to judge issues such as TVA because of the mass of subtle and not-so-subtle propaganda from both sides. His own view about TVA, how. ever-apart from MVA, which would be so much bigger-was that it had done a remarkable job. He had even heard a Republican say: "My grandfather was a Republican, my father was a Republican, and so am I, but that man Roosevelt surely did at least one good = he started TVA." ~ Irrigation did remarkable things to arid land’ in the West, Mr. Lamont thought. Land which ran about one sheep to five or six acres, or one cattle beast to 25 or 30, changed to such an

extent that it became used for different purposes altogether. In parts of California, where it was a simple job-the actual irrigation coming just from damming the drains when the water was needed, you could drive for miles along a road and pass nothing but asparagus farms, or acre on acre of lettuces. "Arid land was often excellent land, with fine chemical properties once .the water got to it," Mr. Lamont said. Some of the western lands-in Colorado, for instance-was very similar to our own Central Otago land, and the result of irrigation was remarkable. Without irrigation much of the land could never be used for fattening. That was one difference in New Zealand and American methods. In America, to fatten stock, fattening paddocks of lush grass were not kept. In-the west there was not the lush grass. What was done was to put the cattle in a yard piled high with, stacked food for them. The cattle were brought in from the range, fed on all this winter feed, fattened and sold. It meant an immense amount of crop-grow-ing. Anti-Trust Laws Though he had not gone to America to study such questions, Mr. Lamont found some strong evidence of support for anti-trust laws. He quoted two examples. In one State a private railroad also had control of a bus-service. That gave it a monopoly of transport in an area. Someone took the appropriate steps to have the matter tested under the antitrust laws, and the result was that the company was told by the Supreme Court that it would have to sell one or the other-the railroad or the bus-service. It could not hold both. Similarly, the Pullman Company had been told by a Court order that it could not have the sole rights of manufacture and of leasing all railway sleeping cars. It could have one or the other, but not both. :