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Show :;- x , -Vk t - a- 1 , V V - "tsV - N- x, iwwwuaww uhw-uji j Jwwwwiaay-; x-:Ny 'muu r "'!( '. i , i i j i , i I I x a I X X1. I I x l Above: Aerial View of the Huge Norns Dam Project. Below: State Line Station, at the Illinois-Indiana Line, Most Modern of Steam Generating Gen-erating Plants. " i " x I S"1 Xs 1 1 V . i V, jif-tft - :- ', ' -' David E. Llllenthal. ! C: "More Power to You," Is , 1 Low rates, of course, re t1 talking point. 11 Much publicity has been ghJ bills for the first month of :' after the city of Tupelo, Ml:? gan buying electricity whi: from the TVA on March 1" Among the examples cited we of Reed Bros., who paid ?21C: C.5S0 kilowatt-hours In JY!f and, under the new rate weft' Aim of Administration Government Becomes Frank Competitor of Private Enterprise En-terprise in Generating, Distributing and Selling Electric Energy. to buy 10,210 kilowntt-hof' march for $145.38; the M'' Ice Cream company, who use ;i ly 27 per cent more electrl1' March than in January, yet bill approximately $30 Id1 March ; and the Tupelo Cotto'H which paid $1,8-16.40 in Mm' 20 per cent more current P' paid $3,181.38 for in Jauuary-r New Light Bills Pleasl1 Residential customers were ',' with similar slashes In tliel,3' According to Dr. Arthur C ! gan, engineer, college preside3' educator, who is the chalrr the board of three directors a ed to manage the TVA projer rates are considered suffl'" low to constitute an econo: 1 feasible and desirable project 1 ever the demand is such tl 1 market is present which w" sorb such large quantities oi hours of the day. 's Therein lies the success or : li of TVA; and therein lies t'ii swer to what relation the pO owned power and light plafi bear to the privately-operatf li tral station company of t'! ture. The market will have '' found or created. s Before cheap power can anything, and before it can '( any consumers to the area lr?i numbers, erosion of the soil b :f must be checked and farms of be fertilized. w Preparing the fertilizer plsn Muscle Shoals and elsewho supply the farmer with fes that lie can afford, to rejuven. t soil to a point where it wlli i to produce, are forces under v rectlon of Dr. Harcourt A. 5 n (no relation to the other ,j Morgan), who is a co-ordin.i' agriculture and Industry c.;, TVA directorate. The third, ber Is the youthful David L; enthal, who Is power direr the project He Is a writer, authority on public utilltlei, a former member of the Wif; ( power commission. n Important Questions. :;e What they are going to do the harm that may come to sections of the country if industries and home-folks ni.,, suaded to move In masses lr Another difficulty with hydro plants is that, in order to supply a demand that la fairly consistent, the flow of rivers upon which the plants are situated must be concentrated. con-centrated. To Insure perfectly controlled flow of the river at any point on the system, the plans of the TVA Include In-clude no less than 200 dams, all operated op-erated from a central control house. Thus, over a vast area, man will be able to control nature by the push of a button. Plan for 200 Dams. More difficult for the TVA to overcome will be the lack of a market mar-ket In the territory where It Is to generate. There are only 2,000,000 inhabitants of the Tennessee valley, although the TVA, when completed, will be generating 25,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours a year, almost a third of the total amount required to supply the needs of the entire United Stntes In 1932, when 79,000,-000,000 79,000,-000,000 kilowatt-hours were generated. gen-erated. By supplying power that Is much cheaper than that which the val-ieyites val-ieyites are using now, encouraging them to use more and more electricity, elec-tricity, heating and air-conditioning fheir homes with It, and making it do In home, farm and Industry every conceivable labor to which electric power may be applied, the TVA hopes to Increase the load to a large degree. The directors have opened a subsidiary organization, the EHFA (Electric Home and Farm Authority), whose chief functions func-tions have been to finance customers custom-ers In their purchase of appliances of all kinds. Tiiis still does not help to centralize cen-tralize the load In the area. Fifty per cent of the inhabitants live on farms, 20 per cent in cities and the remainder in small towns. The average av-erage yearly Income Is but $145. This Income is expected to be Improved Im-proved by the reforestation and flood-prevention measure, which will Increase the value of the farmlands; by the operation of cheap fertilizer plants to aid the farmers in restoring restor-ing the productivity of much soil that would ordinarily be good, but has been burned out, and by educational educa-tional work among the farm people. By WILLIAM C. UTLEY ELECTRICITY is In the air over the valley of the Tennessee Tennes-see river. Energy pick-swinging, ditch-digging, back-sweating energy en-ergy bristles out of slopes where semi-primitive mountaineers have lagged behind the times. "More Power to You" Is the slogan that seems almost to furnish a rhythm for the laboring actions of the ten thousand workers who have but lately come there, and whose ranks are soon to be Increased by another ten thousand. For power Is the watchword of the New Deal, as it is applied to the Tennessee valley authority. The TVA, as it is alphabetically shortened for the accommodation of breath and tongue, was created to supply jobs, to improve navigation, naviga-tion, to control floods, to reclaim thousands of acres of undeveloped natural resources, and what has come to be regarded as most important impor-tant of all, to create, distribute and sell electric power at the lowest possible cost. It has been authorized au-thorized to use federal funds; it will complete an expenditure of more than a billion dollars on Tennessee Ten-nessee river projects. To be sure, it Is by no means all of what appears to be the largest scale attempt ever made by the federal fed-eral government to get into the electric power Industry. Along the Colorado river $165,000,000 Is going Into dams and reservoirs and power pow-er plants; the Columbia river's strength is being harnessed to the tune of $711,000,000; $257,000,000 Is being spent on projects along the St. Lawrence (although about two-thirds two-thirds of that amount Is for navigation navi-gation Improvements), and more proj ects are under way, at other points throughout the land. Tennessee Development. - But at the moment It Is the Tennessee Ten-nessee development that Is holding the attention of every person and industry whose annual budget must make allowances for the payment of bills for electrical energy. For the administration has openly declared de-clared that it intends to offer the TVA projects as a "yardstick" for the measurement of electric rates To Build Up Industry. Through the national exploitation of the low power rates and the remaking re-making of the area into a country of model homes and homeland, the TVA will endeavor to promote wholesale exodus of Industries and home-owners Into the Tennessee valley, building up a much greater prospective load than now exists there. All of these moves have already al-ready begun to spur the private companies in the Tennessee valley to similar efforts. They have reduced re-duced rates 20 to 25 per cent and have succeeded in Increasing usage among their customers. It Is easy enough to determine what has to be done to make the TVA a success, but the actual accomplishments ac-complishments are a gargantuan task. Right now the private plants In the area have capacity 33 per cent In excess of the maximum load. All of the load centers the TVA plans to serve are already served by two Independent sources. ; charged by municipal plants and privately-owned electric light and power companies everywhere. With that in mind, the TVA Is blossoming forth as a frank, out-and-out competitor com-petitor of private enterprise -In generating, gen-erating, distributing and selling electricity to municipalities, homes, farms and Industries. If it reaches its ultimate goal It will bid fair to effect other major changes In the Industry than lowering low-ering of rates. It will mark the first serious challenge for supremacy suprem-acy of falling water over steam at high pressure as a force for turning generator turbines. Private utilities have for years favored the steam generating plant over the hydro plant. Reasons for the favor of the steam turbine are sound enough. The best sources of hydro-electric power are, in most cases, far removed re-moved from the big load centers that Is, the areas where consumption consump-tion la most highly concentrated. TVA territory, the directors lc explained. Also the question will the government attempt t up the loads at the other hydi.; trie projects In the same The Columbia river project ;; when completed, will have , paclty more than four-fifths l.0 the total of nil the hydro-,, stations In the country two Js ago. The combined complet. paclty of tlie Tennessee, B , Dam, Columbia river and St;h rence river projects will be 100 per cent of the entire n. 1932 electrical output, both and hydro. '..i. There are more than $17.0;? 000 invested In privately-'S electric station companies I. ( United States. They have tr. of stockholders. How thes be affected by government cd tion with private Industry w ; pond largely on the success C ' ure of the TVA. , W'oatm-n Nowapaper Doln'( 111 |