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The mushrooming electric-power industry, no less than the holding companies, attracted the fire of the New deal reformers. Within a few decades it had risen from nothingness to a colossus which represented an investment of thirteen billion dollars. A public Utility, it
reached directly and regularly into the pocketbooks of millions of citizens for a vitally needed service. Ardent New Dealers accused it of gouging the public with excessive rates, especially in view of the fact that it owed its success to having secured, often for a song, priceless water-power sites from the public domain. The tempestuous Tennessee River provided the New Deal with a rare opportunity. With its tributaries, the river drained a badly eroded area about the size of England, and one containing some 2,500,000 of the most poverty-stricken people in America. The government already owned valuable properties at Muscle Shoals, where it had erected plants for the manufacture of needed nitrates in World War 1. By developing the hydroelectric potential of the entire area, Washington could combine the immediate advantage of putting thousands of men to work with a long term project for reforming the power monopoly.
The act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was passed by the Hundred Days Congress. The new agency was determined to discover precisely how much the production and distribution of electricity cost, so that a "yardstick" could be set up to test the fairness of rates charged by private companies. The utility corporations fought back bitterly against this entering wedge of governmental control, and charged that the low cost of TVA power was due to dishonest bookkeeping and the absence of taxes.
But the New Dealers shrugged off such outcries, and pointed a prideful finger at the amazing achievements of the TVA. The gigantic project had brought to the area not only full employment and the blessings of cheap electric power, but low-cost housing, abundant cheap nitrates, the restoration of eroded soil, reforestation, improved navigation, and flood control. The rivers ran blue instead of brown; and a once poverty-cursed area was being transformed into one of the most flourishing regions in the country.
