Ago the first pioneers crossed the oceans to a new world. A promise called the promise of a land where a man could build. His own raise his children in freedom. They call from the wilderness and empire of agriculture and industry. Themselves new and Higher Standards of living and yet in one of the great River Valleys of america something went wrong. Here in the Tennessee Valley three centuries later the descendants of the pioneers were a neglected people. Living in a ruined land for these children the hope and the thomas were dead for them. The only future was poverty ignorance drudgery. The struggle to scratch a bare living from the reluctant soil even the older man had forgotten that the valley had once been bright with promise and with hope Horace Higgins was one of the many who had given up the fight. Whats the use he said . Fill up those gullies in the first rain washes it away. Its the same with all the land around here. It may have been good land once. But its bad land now. Badland hopeless land henry clark wondered erosion the scientists call it. The eating away of the soil the destruction which began innocently when the early settlers cut down the forests. When the farmers are of ignorance plowed straight furrows down the hillside. Instruction from the sky here this is the way it was year after year in a forgotten part of the United States. This was the havoc caused by greed and neglect. And men working alone and unaided against the forces of nature farms towns industry smash. Hundreds drowned thousands made homeless energies of the river running to waste budgies of the people too henry clarks trouble was the trouble of three million americans and the Tennessee Valley it became the direct concern of 130 million americans in the 48 states. Challenged to democracy and its ability to care for its own. The valley of the Tennessee River lies in the southeastern United States it covers an area of 40,000 square miles. Nearly as large as england. It was a problem of reconstruction. Construction of land reconstruction of people democracy met the test. It found the men to supervise the job. James p. Pope United States senator from the west Harcourt Morgan president of the university of see who had worked out an Agricultural Program for the whole area. David lillianthal administrator and champion of legislation for cooperative electric power George Norris of Great American statesman who long had dreamed of Regional Planning of setting up a National Experiment in one region, which could serve as a yardstick for every region . This was the plan to change the river through a series of giant dams checking the floods. To open it to navigation from its mouth to its head wars. The farmers the benefit of modern science and research to help them control the water on their land and restore the fertility of the soil. To reforest millions of acres on the ravaged to exploit the Mineral Resources of the area to use the electric power generated by the dams to develop and rehabilitate industry in the cities. To electrify the farms through rural cooperatives above all to prove that human problems can be solved by reason science and education the Tennessee Valley was to be pioneered again this time to be developed not plundered. This time not for the benefit of a fuel but for the many who lived in it. These were the new pioneers. The architects the Research Chemists the agricultural experts power man the designers of hydroelectric dams their method was to control nature not by defying her as in the wasteful past but by understanding and harnessing. Service of humanity in may 1933 a new chapter was written in American Public policy when the plan was brought before the representatives of the people in congress. An act was passed creating the tva the Tennessee Valley authority. President roosevelt told the nation that the project would set an example of planning not for this generation alone, but for all a generations to come then things began to happen in the valley. Here the many of the valley people the plan was an intrusion. Years of isolation ignorance and bigotry die hard they said let the government men do things with machines over the mountain. None of our business, but you was more inquisitive. And the pioneer spirit was still alive over the mountain was something new big. Exciting if here here the dam builders 200,000 of them in all 4,000 on this one project. Valley farmers and miners mountaineers and city workers to them. This was more than a job. They had a stake in what they were. They were building for themselves and for their children. For the future of the valley as the months passed the farmershee magnitude of the work. But even the openminded one like henry clark couldnt understand at first just what it all had to do with them. It was the business of john warden a tva agricultural representative to answer that. It has everything to do with the farmers. He said the dams are just a beginning. Without the fullest cooperation of the people on the land. Theyre worthless. There were small meetings up and down the valley. John warden told the farmers 10 inches of topsoils supports all the life honor every drop of rain that falls on your fields carries away a bit of this soil. Every time it rains the gullies the scars on your fields. Grow deeper and wider every year the precious topsoil goes faster. The undersoil is hard and sterile. The water which should have soaked into your land runs off uselessly. Your topsoil travels with it uselessly down to the delta of the river. Millions of tons of good farming soil lost forever blowing away with the wind all this waste isnt necessary. It can be stopped. Your land can be saved if we work together. Youve seen the dams, but theyre only part of the plan. The rest of it is up to you. If were to succeed all of us, you must learn to stop the erosion of your own land. The tva was created for you. To teach you new methods to provide you with fertilizers to restore your soil. The land is yours the dams. Are yours the whole tv . Is yours we want you to use it . This is how you can become a part of the plan. We need volunteers to try out the new methods. To prove that they are the right ones. Thousands of farmers have already volunteered how about you . It isnt easy for men bound by habit and tradition to change their whole way of thinking john warden knew. Farmers of the isolated back valleys youd talk to hundreds of groups like this. And he knew they needed time. In signing with the tva henry clock became what was called a test demonstration farmer. His farm and thousands of others were to serve as laboratories where the new methods could be tested and observed by all. Using a terracer made available by the tva john warden showed henry the principles of contour farming. This was radical departure from the old method of square farm contour henry learned to follow the curve of the land but could the water run curves held it on the land. Then what life into the exhausted soil henry used a new phosphate fertilizer developed by the chemists from all found in the region . The first season henrys chief crop was clover. This was to provide the soil with nitrogen and revitalize the land but it wasnt a cash crop henry had been worn still when he made up his accounts the end of the year. He couldnt help but feel well, he sort of set his heart on that new track. This was the crucial period first season the tva man had known it would be they were sure of their equipment and methods but human minds and emotions were another thing. It was a hard decision for henry clark. Well, he should go on. But he was the descendant of pioneers of men who had taken a chance and would know that their salvation lay in cooperation the old spirit of the pioneers was reawakened. The machines began to one by the next year there were results. Henry clark had the best crop of tobacco ever grown in the county. He was sending substantial quantities of food to market. And giving his neighbors plenty of food for thought they came to see the new fertilizer the new methods. And the student became a teacher in the Tennessee Valley that year 30,000 other demonstration farmers became teachers too. Well the next years harvest henry and his neighbors had a threshing machine especially designed by the tva experts for this valley each group of farmers. Had a machine each farmer had an equal right to its use no longer was it one man alone against the drought in the flood for the first time they were acting together cooperatively for a common purpose. And even more a change was beginning to come into their thinking. For the first time they were thinking in terms of each other. What they could accomplish together by working together. With new machinery new methods for the definite plan to follow the plan that embraced them all the farmers worked and the land responded. You know. You are here when Horace Higgins saw henry riding his new tractor. He began to understand the real meaning of tva. That the individual through cooperation with his fellows. Becomes a more important individual as john warden says when you develop people you have something. Gonna the development of people is the first concern of a democracy. In school the children learn how to use the things that were built for them. How the dams work . Up in the mountains on the tributary streams high dams back up reservoirs against the time of drought releasing the water when it is needed holding it in check when the rains come. Down the Tennessee River itself dams control the water step by step instead of the alternate floods and drought water can now be dispatched as trains are dispatched on a railroad system. These are the symbols of a nations constructive energy. Douglas, guntersville cherokee wilson pickwick landing, chickamauga, fontana hails bar whats bomb fort loudon . Wheeler appalachia knowledge built for and owned by the people of the United States day and night in peace and war the dams work for the people. Power for the factories power for new industry power to run a million machine. Turning out aircraft tractors textures engines shoe fertilizer aluminum cheap and abundant power to light the cities and villages power for the farmers. Power that can be converted to a hundred homely uses. Power working tirelessly endlessly raising standards reducing drudgery power hands of the people the children of the Tennessee Valley have recaptured the hope of their grandfather. They have learned that the tva is indeed a yard. Stick a measure of what men can build in peace a measure of the stature of a new and better world. Dignity a world a child can walk into