UTILITIES: Private Money for TVA

I therefore suggest to the Congress legislation to create a Tennessee Valley Authority—a corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise.

In the years following that plea by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority became the swirling center of a great national controversy. Castigated by its enemies as a socialistic octopus, defended by its friends as an amiable and beneficent giant, the TVA wielded the power of government to tame the floods of the Tennessee River and revitalize its vast...