World war ii, photographers working for the u. S. Government were signed to travel the United States and document living and working conditions and later war protection production efforts. In 1939, the photographers began using kodachrome color film. In this second of a two part american artifacts, Beverly Brannan tells the stories about the collection and photographers. Beverly we are in the center andt of the prints photographs division of the library of congress. The library has a collection of color photographs from the 1930s and 1940s. They started as an experiment with color film. Kodak was just putting its color film in the market. Sent it out to photographers at institutions to give it a try, to see if they could create a market for it. The pictures were free. So they were appealing to newspapers, magazines, publishing agencies, book publishers. I was familiar already with the black and white photographs. Farm are about 171,000 Security Administration and office of war informat
Eroded hills, the gull yid fields, the ccc working with the Forest Service and agricultural experts have started to put the warm fields and hill sides back together. Black walnut and pine, roots for the cut over and burned hill sides. Roots to hold the water in the ground. Black walnut and pine for the new forest reserves. Soil conservation men that worked out crop systems with the farmers of the valley. Crops to conserve and enrich the top soil so that the day a million acres of land in the Tennessee Valley are saying instead of speeding the water off the ground. But you cannot plan for water and land unless you plan for people. Down in the valley, the Farm Security administration has built the Model Agricultural Community living in homes they themselves built paying on long term rates, they will have a chance to share in the wealth of the valley. More important, the Farm Security administration has loaned thousands of dollars to farmers in the valley. Farmers who were caught by years
Comes down. Down from a thousand hill sides, washing the top off of the valley. For 50 years we dug for cotton and moved west when the land gave out. For 50 years we plowed for corn and moved on when the land gave out. We planted and plowed with no regard for the future and 400 million tons of top soil, 400 million tons of our most val valuable resource have been washed into the gulf of mexico every year. And poor land makes poor people. Poor people make poor land. For a quarter of a century, we have been forcing more and more farmers into tenants. 10 are shared croppers down on their knees in the valley. A share of the crop their only security, no home, no land of their own, aimless, foot loose and impoverished. Unable to eat even from the land because their cash crop is their only livelihood. Credit at the store their only reserve. A generation growing up with no new land in the west, no new continent to build. A generation whose people knew Kings Mountain and shilou. A generation wh
Growing up without proper food, medical care or schooling, ill clad, il housed and ill fed and in the greatest river valley in the world. There is no such thing as an ideal river in nature but the Mississippi River is out of joint. Dust blowing in the west, floods raging in the east, we have seen these problems growing to alarming extremes. When we first found the great valley, it was 40 forested. Today, for every 100 acres of forest we found, we have ten left. Today 5 of the entire valley is ruined forever for agricultural use. 25 of the top soil has been shoved by the old river into the gulf of mexico. Today two out of five farmers in the valley are tenant farmers. 10 of them share croppers and we are forcing 50,000 more into tenancy and cropping every year. Flood control of the mississippi means control in the great delta. Control. We had the power to take the valley apart, we have the power to put it together again. In 1933 we started. Down on the Tennessee River when congress crea
Yeah, 2 a day. I think i got 2. 25 after i was promoted to run the drill. On your very first job, you learned how to work with your hands, didnt you . Well, that wasnt quite the whole story. I worked in with my hands when i was a boy. Time was the agony of walking, going from mine to mine, looking for a job. I take it, then, that you during that period, you were able to lay aside a little money for future activities . Well i certainly laid enough money aside to get down to San Francisco and look for a better job. Well mr. Hoover, how did you happen to get into professional engineering after those underground mining days experience . Well, i developed a great friend of dr. Brenner here at stanford. He was one of those men who always boosted youngsters along. He introduced me to the leading engineer in San Francisco, mr. Lewis janner. Mr. Janner gave me a temporary appointment. He had an application for an engineer to go to australia. There i went on my first 10,000 job. Subsequently do