TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY ACT, TVA

For those unfamiliar with the HISTORIC and momentous creation of a US TVA and PUBLIC ELECTRICAL GENERATION, I HIGHLIGHT it below with a WIKI link.

By definition, a WIKI link is NOT comprehensive history, but, nonetheless, does provide a service, a thumbnail sketch, a starting place.

One can follow backwards embedded links and photo captions and do further reading.

As an aside, Morgan name on TVA  Board is NOT in any way associated with PRIVATE JP Morgan firm.
 
If you click onto names in photos below you get a SNIPPET  background of people involved as well as tidbits of CONTROVERSIES, divisions, and, disputes, surrounding and WITHIN Roosevelt's Administration.

In ESSENCE, it ALL boils down to an IRRESOLVABLE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN PUBLIC versus PRIVATE OWNERSHIP, which, in a nutshell, continues thru WWII, US-USSR Cold War, and, subsequent counter-revolution TODAY.

The two can and do NOT coexist, cohabitate, peacefully.

They are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, INCOMPATIBLE and diametrically opposed CATEGORIES.

So, I EXTRACTED from much longer text a few PERTINENT paragraphs which I think nicely ENCAPSULATES above theme:
 
"....President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act (ch. 32, 48 Stat. 58, codified as amended at 16 U.S.C. § 831, et seq.), creating the TVA....

 

....During the 1920s and the Great Depression years, Americans began to support the idea of public ownership of utilities, particularly hydroelectric power facilities.
 
The concept of government-owned generation facilities selling to publicly owned distribution utilities was controversial and remains so today.^[2]

Many believed privately owned power companies were charging too much for power, did not employ fair operating practices, and were subject to abuse by their owners (utility holding companies), at the expense of consumers.
 
During his presidential campaign, Roosevelt claimed that private utilities had "selfish purposes" and said, "Never shall the federal government part with its sovereignty or with its control of its power resources while I'm president of the United States."

By forming utility holding companies, the private sector controlled 94 percent of generation by 1921, essentially unregulated.
 
(This gave rise to the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA)).
 
Many private companies in the Tennessee Valley were bought by the federal government.
 
Others shut down, unable to compete with the TVA.

Government regulations were also passed to prevent competition with TVA..."

FROM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority