This short film – originally titled as ‘The Valley of the Tennessee’ – is a 1944 documentary produced by the U.S. Office of War Information. The film shows the hardships of agriculture before the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) came in and built many dams in the 1930s and 1940s to help prevent the problems of flooding, erosion, and poor irrigation. Before the TVA built its many dams there were a lot of farms, houses, and lives lost due to flooding. With the building of the dams and educating of the farmers in the Tennessee River Valley, the TVA helped better the area for generations to come. The film documents the origins and construction of the Tennessee Valley Authority and its effect on the people of the valley.
VIDEO HERE (28:33 minutes)
Floods or TVA New Deal? Better to have taken the hardships and kept their freedom instead of FDR's New York socialism. Not that they were given a choice, really.
ReplyDeleteThey weren't given much of a choice when it came to the Manhattan Project's land grab to build the lab at Oak Ridge either.
DeleteIt came from a court order that more or less said "Get your shit and get gone by (Date)"
Same thing on military bases too. When I was living on post at Ft Benning back in the mid-70s, I knew of several old home sites and family graveyards within a few miles of my house.
DeleteMy family's ranch was eminent domained in 1942. When the Department of War took the 1034 acres to create Camp Beale (now Beale AFB) it was with the promise that when the government determined the property was declared surplus the families that originally owned it could buy it back at the same dollar amount they were paid for it.
Delete17 years later all the parcels were put up for bid as "Prime California Property". The family was lucky to recover 554 acres of the original ranch at auction for $84 an acre after being paid $14 an acre for it in 1942.
BTW, all structures, including the Victorian home my wife's great-grandfather built for his wife around the turn of the century, were destroyed, as was every other structure in the 66,000 acres the government 'acquired' in '42 because the Army figured they were landmarks that the Japanese could use in an attack on the mainland.
Everything the government told my family from 1942 to 1960 was a lie. And they knew it.
The govt lies didn't stop in '60
Deletech
There's a great movie on this subject called 'Wild River' (1960) starring Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet. It's not aired very often but if you ever get a chance to see it, please do. Some of the scenes in it are so similar to this documentary it's remarkable.
ReplyDeletealso hydroelectric power was provided to an area that needed it, so not all bad. -Tarheel
ReplyDeleteIn grade school my teacher was near hysterical in damning to hell the TVA. The property of her kin, their homes, even the town they had built by years of determination and hard work were all lost.
ReplyDeleteI shall not forget her impassioned pleas to not ever trust the government. Hers was not a one time rant, nor was it continuous. Yet often enough that it made a lasting mark.
I can point out the general location of a few old town sites lying at the bottom of California reservoirs up in the foothills of the Sierras.
DeleteMajor public works projects are always win/lose situations. They bring benefits such as hydroelectric power but they also force some people to give up their lands. There is no easy always correct answer in such situations. Doubt this reality will ever change.
ReplyDeleteSome serious propaganda so you know someone is getting screwed. I got to talk to some people getting their property eminent domained for a road expansion. They were getting paid for their property, supposedly at market rates. No help with moving, no help with affording their new location (think of the elderly and disabled). Imagine being a farmer in a home your grandfather built and now your given some money, told go away. Where, what can you buy-all the good land is taken. Even when you get something you have to start from scratch.
ReplyDeleteAlso they did half the job with the farmers in introducing new agricultural methods. They only knew half the story and what they did was state of the art, but now we know even more but the government that is so concerned with carbon emissions can't bother to educate about how to build up the soil (Hint-requires lots of cows, sheep and goats)
Look up regenerative agriculture - you can actually build the topsoil back up. Fertilizers kill the biome in the soil by flooding it with nutrients. The nutrients mostly wash away and the biome begins to re-establish itself but then we add more fertilizer. The biome left to itself will release nutrients from the subsoil so the challenge is to remove nutrients at the rate of addition.
You can keep the soil always under a cover of green and plant crops through the top cover. They didn't eliminate soil erosion, only slowed it down. By the way, to build soil you need animal dung in quantity (cows, sheep and goats) and grass to retain it. East of the Mississippi you need to add minerals, best done by giving mineral supplements to your animals. Most farmers in my area are small and run cows only because you don't have to worry about coyotes. They hold day jobs and generally joke that they break even when they sell a cow for the cost of the hay which is not far from the truth. They are not taught to manage the soil. Not only should you idle a field to rest it, but you need to have it grazed to rebuild top soil.