CONTENTS FOREWORD PART ONE I. MEET THE TAITS 2. FATHER T AKE A S T RIP 3. NEVERU NDERESTIMA A T WE OMAN 4. Two AND TWO M AKEF IVE 5. PRINCIPAWL ITHOUTIN TEREST 6. FATHER GETS THE BAD NEWS PART TWO I. So WHAT 2. RAUSHENBU T SH H, OMPS O C N O. 3. OUR DREAMCS OME T RUE 4. FROMR AUSHENBU T S O H L ILIENTHAL 5. THAT M ANI S HEREA GAIN 6. EXPERIMEN V T ER SUS EXPERIENCE PART THREE I. ARE THE DAMSP HONY T, OO 2. THE E NGINEER T S A LE 3. THE B ILLION-DOLLCAORM PROMISE 4. THE H UMANFA CTOR 5. PRODIGALRSE TURN 6. LETS BE FAIR ABOUT IT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to thank Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for permission to use material from Robert L. Duffus The Valley and Its People Public Ownership League and Car1 D. Thompson for quotations from Public Ownership Magazine and The New Leader for passages from H. S. Raushenbushs articles. FOREWORD l IT IS only fair to warn the reader at the start that 1 am no authority on electricity or the production of electric power. I know about as little, technically speaking, of the mysterioud force which makes my light shine and my clock tick and my wifes washing machine wash as it is possible for an adult, reasonably educated person to know and still be accepted socially by his fellow man and woman. I do know, however, that it is important that the activities listed above and many other activities of what has quite properly been called The Electric Age should continue unabated and, if possible, unhampered by considerations either industrial or ideological. My present acute interest in this larger phase of the subject was aroused first by the mass of adulatory literature issued by and about the Tennessee Valley Authority. I had no quarrel with this literature. Ibelieved, and still believe, that much of the adulation was deserved. My reportorial sense, however, as well as such common sense as I possessed, told me that there must be two sides to this as to every other question. As a frequent and insatiably curious traveler throughout all sections of the country, I was already more or less familiar with the great government power projects in the South, Southwest, and Northwest. I now began a series of visits to power plants under business management, as distinguished from political management, and met and talked with many of the great figures of the industry. As a result of these visits and contacts I was encouraged to write this book. For assistance in its preparation I owe thanks not only to these veterans of the electric industry but to the officials of 9 10 FOREWORD the Tennessee Valley Authority who offered every facility for observation and study to one whom they kne qto be a wholly unawed critic of their experiment. Finally I owe continuing gratitude to Barbara Muriel Collins for her many editorial contributions to my work. FREDERICLK, C OLLINS West Falmouth, Massachusetts. July 1 8 1945. PART ONE CHAPTER 1 I MEET THE TAITS In which an American family discusses a problem which vitally aflects euery other American family. I AM John Tait. I live in a medium-size house in a mediumsize community. My family is medium-size, too my wife, Lovina my daughter, Mary, age twenty-five, married to a local young man now somewhere in the far Pacific and my son, age seventeen, freshman at a near-by college. We are simple folk, our home a modest one. I am what is known as a good provider, and Lovina makes the provision go a long way. Mary has both feet-verypretty ones, I dont mind...