Two rivers joined to make the tennessee. Heres where they meet, just above knoxville, tennessee. From this point, it is 622 miles to kentucky, where the tennessee flows into the ohio. A number of major tributaries help to drain the over 400 miles of the watershed, a basin that includes parts of seven states. Theres rainfall ranging between 50 and 80 inches a year. These rivers and a myriad of smaller streams tap a richly diversified area. The Tennessee Valley is a fair crosssection of our country. Some problems of other regions are absent here. Others are more acute than elsewhere. In the main, the problems of the valley are the problems of america. Here comes the outline of the Tennessee Valley. The area in which president roosevelt asked congress to establish a demonstration of national planning. Let us examine some of the conditions the president is determined to correct. Of course, such property as this is not universal in the valley, but it exists and all too frequently. Not only in the Tennessee Valley but through the length and breadth of our land. Here is regimentation with a vengeance. The regimentation of poverty. Sometimes the outlook is so hopeless that men actually abandon their farms. Here is where one did. The principal reason for abandoning farms is soil erosion. Torrential rain cuts deep gullies, washing away the soil and destroying the growing power of the land. And floods have taken their toll in human misery, destroying millions of dollars in property every year. These are some of the reasons why president roosevelt asked to create the Tennessee Valley authority. He had in mind the tremendous National Investment lying idle. Two huge nitrate plants built as wartime emergency measures. The dam and powerhouse begun during the world war. But left virtually idle until the coming of the tva. He believes that these objectives, when realized, will not only bring about the economic and social wellbeing of the People Living in the valley, but also point the way for similar advances throughout the rest of the country. Actual construction operations start. These close a portion of the river. When they are pumped dry, they begin excavating the bedrock. Excavation is complete and the placing of concrete has begun. 265 feet highng and 210 feet thick at the base. They were fortunate in finding a quarry you see on the left, the dolamite stone, suited for making concrete. Show you from start to finish the straightline operation which constructs this hillside into highgrade concrete. Theres a compression of air 175 pounds per square inch. Then the drillers move in and prepare the exposed rock for blasting. They prepare the exposed rock for blasting. When everything is ready, the signal is given and there she goes. If that big one goes over the edge, no, not quite. Here comes another. Electric shovels move in as soon as the smoke is clear. They start the rock on its way to the crater. There. That did it. Ah. A relief to ease that one down. Heavily laden with this all important dolomite rock, these trucks leave the scene of the blast and wind down the quarry where the truck dumps its load below. The shape and size of rock mean nothing. Its job is to reduce everything. To stones not over six inches through. It does this with the motion of that spindle in the center there. This crusher is embedded in the hillside and drops the Crushed Stone onto a Conveyor Belt to deliver its load to the secondary one standing in between the two Conveyor Belts. The conveyor in the background comes from the primary crusher on the hillside. Here, the stone is reduced to various sizes, three inches and under, and poured into the lower belt. It is sorted into four sizes and passing over the screens. The screens deposit the storage piles. Under the screen is a concrete with electrically operated gates and conveyor to carry any desired size forward. Stone too fine is taken over to the belt to be made into sand. They have been screened into sizes and free of all two impurities. Finally, the sand is carried out on the belt to the left and dumped into storage piles. Meanwhile, cement is taken from this storage tank at the railroad five miles away and carried to a similar one at the dam. A heavyduty concrete highway built by the tva to transport materials and equipment. The road winds through beautiful wooded hills, a silhouette of the mountains beyond. When that is complete, it will form a permanent path of tennessees highway system. All these operations come together, beneath which stand three concrete mixers with stone, sand, and cement to turn into concrete. Scales with dials register the weight. An operator proportions the ingredients. No, not quite enough that time. Better give it a little more. There, thats right. The batch shoots down through this funnel to charge one of the three mixers. This plant is electrically timed to deliver three cubic yards of fresh concrete every minute. When the mixture is ready, it is poured into gasolinedriven transfer cars which carry the concrete over the shoulder of the hill. These buckets hold six cubic yards and there are two of them in operation. One of them receives that load every minute and a half, day and night. It will take one million cubic yards to complete the dam. 166,000 bucketfuls must be swung out and deposited. This bucket now swinging through the air has historic significance, for it contains the concrete to be deposited at first norris dam in july 1934. The two cables used are suspended between the tower high to the west and the tower 925 the tower 1925 feet away across the site. A carriage runs on each cable, from which hangs with a massive hook to lift the concrete bucket or any other heavy object the engineers wish to have moved. An operator in each tower controls the full operation of his cable way. It is a simple matter for him to raise and lower the hook, to run the carriage up and back. Or to move his head and tail tower up and down stream at will. The main cable is anchored securely at each end. Here is a crosssection, showing strands ofarate steel wire which gives the cable breaking strength of 1,100,000 pounds. When franklin d. Roosevelt visited norris dam, he was operated in interested in the operation of the cable weight. When Eleanor Roosevelt visited norris dam, he was operated in interested in the operation of the cable weight. After inspection, she went into detail with the Tennessee Valley authority, who with his fellow directors guide the activities of the authority. Misses roosevelt counted herself fortunate in being given a ride, cage hooked onto the cable way in place of a concrete bucket. A delicate operation was the placing of 20 foot steel tubes to pass the water through the dam into the turbines. Here they are attaching both cables to the first section. They tell the Cable Operators to take it away. Those sections weigh 40 tons a piece and keeping the two cables in step called for effect coordination. Its clear off the ground now. Its on its way. Here here it is settling in to its cradle at the base of the dam. When all sections of both have been laid, concrete will rise around them. Now, this shift, which has worked 5. 5 hours, is through for the day and waiting on a new shift. Soon, the men you see on the ground will be rolling towards the town which serves them as a construction camp. Recreation plays an important part in the lives of norris dam workers. The Community House contains a reading room, a library, as well as facilities for dancing, basketball, and a variety of indoor games. Then, the post office and chapel where ministers of various denominations hold services. And a community bank. These dormitories are also a permanent part of the town. Here is where the girls who run the cafeteria live. This cafeteria serves 3300 wellbalanced meals a day. Lets go inside. Outdoor work brings these chaps feeling good and hungry. The helpings are generous. Look at the milk bottles. Visitors often comment on the high type of worker employed there. 350 individual houses have been built at norris. Some are brick, some are wood. One of steel. Several are stone and a large number are cinderblocks. While providing houses for married workers, the authority is endeavoring to make a real contribution to the housing problems of america. The use of cinderblocks and Home Construction has opened low cost housing. Ordinary is mixed with cement and cast into large blocks, easily laid. Due to the low building cost, it is possible for a man to rent a modern well insulated home for 14. 50 a month. Imagine if you had only this amount to spend on rent. Could you get a house in your town like this . The authority maintains trade shops for maintenance and retain and repair work. The shops are also trade schools where Vocational Training are offered to workers in their spare time. Trade unions which anyone is free to join are backing the training and collaborating in the preparation of courses. In some cases, even initiating new ones. About twothirds have signed up for one or more courses. The men are acquiring new skills which will give them the netted give them an added source of income when they return to their home. Courses in ceramics, natural science, mathematics, dairy, and other subjects. Here are the citizens of norris, arranged on ad, shady hillside. They watch some of their fellows competing in a holiday sports. Norris knows what all work and no play does to jack. To jill too for that matter. At a plant such as wheeler, power is generated in proportion to the amount of water flowing. When the river is high, much power can be developed. When it is low, little is available. During the dry period, the water stored in norris reservoir will be released, generating power up there, and again and again, as it passes each river plant such as wheeler. Now lets get down into that dam and watch the drillers pave the way for a blast which will loosen tons and tons of rock from the riverbed. For this particular blast, 100 holes were drilled. Never does anyone except a construction engineer have the opportunity to witness this so close at hand. Compressed air blows the holes clean. Then comes the dynamite. This man is known as a powder monkey. His job is to put the electric fuses into sticks of dynamite. Its ticklish work and calls for a steady hand and plenty of nerves. Then, the stick with the fuse in it is lowered into the holes. Go easy there, fella, thats dynamite. Sand is poured in and tamped down. And the 100 wires led into the central switch. Electric shovels begin cleaning up immediately after the blast. The rock is loaded into trucks and rolled away. Meanwhile, the u. S. Army engineers have built a navigation lock on the opposite bank of the river. The lock will have a lift of 53 feet. Sand and gravel for wheeler dam is obtained from the riverbed. These buckets bring up aggregate and drop it into a screening plant where it is sifted into assorted sizes and poured into separate barges which are then towed upstream to the wheeler site and moored alongside the floating cranes and concrete mixtures. In the absence of rail connection, all material and equipment comes to wheeler by water from wilson dam. A crane lifts great buckets full of gravel. The batcher and the mixer are mounted on a steel barge. When mixed another crane swings its bucket to the point where the concrete is to be deposited. Forms have been prepared. Steel reinforcing rods are ready to be embedded in the concrete. Over 600,000 cubic yards will be required to complete wheeler dam. The bucket deposits its load. The crane goes back for more. The other authoritys latest project is near shiloh battlefield in tennessee. Before construction can begin, a study of the foundation had to be made just like at wheeler and this part of the process is known as core drilling. A steel cylinder with a ring attached to the end bores its way into the bedrock. It exposes a core. The process is just like coring and apple. Good engineering requires this. They cost 2500 each and wear out after a few months use. The core is carefully removed and a notation is made of the depth from which the specimen came. Samples are taken to the laboratory for tests and analysis. The core is one of many checks on the stability of the foundation. Marsh grass and driftwood make ideal breeding grounds for malaria carrying mosquitoes. Patrols cruise along the shorelines spraying a film of oil on the water. This mixture is entirely harmless to men and fish is deadly to the mosquitoes. Just one of many ways tba is cooperating with local tva is cooperating with local authorities. One of the major objectives of the Tennessee ValleyAuthority Act is the readjustment and use of nitrate class number two at of muscle shoals. The act calls for active research and investments in new processes. The most challenging problem today is securing the phosphorus. As a nation, we do not yet realize the entire the tax on phosphorus. The chief source is the vast accumulated remains of prehistoric animals whose bones have long since gone back into the earth. When no thought is given to the future welfare of the land, phosphate strip mining reduces desolation such as this. Under the old system, the top soil was scraped off and the rock was extracted and the site was abandoned. Proper regard for the land might have caused the replacement of the topsoil. The tva is thinking of the future. Its mining methods will allow the future generation to tell. The supply is so restricted that it has been deemed possible to claim the phosphorus located in the bed. Phosphorus is the limiting factor in plant food all of the world and the most important element in soil preservation rehabilitation. As crops are grown and grains are marketed or fed to animals which in turn are shipped to market, phosphorus will leave the land forever. This is an untouched foster phosphorus bed. You will never be able to tell that the phosphate rock has been extracted. The method is to remove the topsoil and take out the raw phosphate rock. Later, the topsoil is replaced in the land returned to agriculture. The farmers themselves are mining the rock for the tva. Phosphate for them is another cash crop but if phosphorus is not readily is not made available millions of tons of grains and meat. Every kernel of grain and spec of bone contains phosphorus. Only a pitifully small percentages ever returned to the soil. This must be restored if our plant and animal life are to be maintained. When it is mind, it is taken to the riverbed and poured down chutes into barges. Here is a good, close view of this allimportant element. When the barge is full, it is towed to the fertilizer plant where the rock is transferred to the hopper cars and taken to the pile. The whole journey is made by rail. Let us look at the pilot demonstration plant that the tva has installed. First, the rocket is dried. And then it is weighed and mixed in this scale house and placed in storage bins. High temperatures change the phosphorus into a gas and it is passed through a. And placed in acid tanks. The pilot manufacturing plant will be adequate for any demonstration this fertilizer production desires. Phosphate is of vital importance in the control of soil erosion. In this field, a version has already set in. And here is what happens when a erosion is left unchecked. The topsoil is gone and the land is destroyed. Millions of acres have already been lost and there is no time to lose. One method is a series of check dams in an extensive protest and an Extensive Program is already underway. Over the gully slopes. A tangle of wires. Where erosion has badly started, they will save the land. 50 counties already have terracing units at work in the valley area and more are coming in all the time. A terracing crew with tractor and scraper will check the beginnings of erosion. It will cost the farmer 1. 50 up to two dollars for the farmer per acre. A broad swath is cut extending clear across the field. Then the second cut is made some 20 feet downhill from the first. These two cuts market the boundary of the terrace. The beauty of this message of this method is that no topsoil is wasted. Since the terraces follow contour lines, the rain is caught and held. Four cuts complete a terrace and the fourth and final cut will be a barrier to the rainfall. And here is a finished field with 1, 2, 3, 4 broad terraces of against it saving this land for all time. Let us follow this line across the hills to tupelo, mississippi. The first to contract with tva power. The main street. The courthouse. The city hall. And the mayor reviewing figures showing that with power costing an average of 55 less than it originally did, sales increased in less than a year. They are learning more the lessons of electricity. Tupelo is not the only city to profit. 10. 35. Look at his bills. Meanwhile, from a substation such as this, the Tennessee Valley authority is pushing lines into Rural Communities and thousands of counties in america have never enjoyed electricity. This is bringing the medium that will lessen or lighten the drudgery of housework. The power lies in the might of the river. Now, the cross arms swinging into place. And the insulator is securely fastened. The line must be tied in tightly because high winds and storms the power policy states that the business of distributing electric energy is a private business. Private and Public Interests in the interest of power are a different kind from quality. The interest of the public is superior to any private interests. Where this private interest and Public Interest conflict, the Public Interest must prevail. If the conflict can be reconciled without interest to the Public Interest without injury to the Public Interest reconciliation can be made. But this is undeniable. This is one of the measures that the people may properly take to protect themselves against unreasonable rates. Low rates alone are not enough. Through its agency, the authority, the tva is making possible a wider use of electricity through a broader use of electric appliances. The authority does not sell a single appliance but it collaborates with manufacturers and with retailers and utilities to bring lowcost, high great to bring lowcost, high great utilities into homes. Electric ranges, water heaters, pumps, refrigerators and a host of other electrical appliances have been mobilized to ease human burden but also to lift the depression providing employment