February 22, 2021 BARRON’S 19
100 YEARS OF BARRON’S
Infrastructure Projects
Are as American as
Worries About Costs
T
he widespread suffering caused by the
Great Depression offered President
Franklin D. Roosevelt nearly unlimited
scope for action to address it.
And FDR didn’t lack for ambition.
“It is an opportunity to do a great
deal for the people of many states and
the whole country,”Barron’squoted Roosevelt in
1933, speaking about his signature infrastructure
initiative, the Tennessee Valley Authority. The
TVA, said FDR, would tie “industry, agriculture,
forestry, and flood control in one great develop-
ment” to ensure “a better place for millions yet
unborn in the days to come.”
Barron’swasn’t swayed. “It is the first of the
Roosevelt rules to keep a useful club in the closet,”
the magazine’s editors wrote.
Many on the right today will be reaching for their
own clubs when President Joe Biden turns to infra-
structure after pushing through his $1.9 trillion
Covid-relief package. With a vow to “go big” and
plans to tackle everything from the environment to
racial justice, Biden seems to be channeling the
spirit of his Democratic predecessor.
Yet Roosevelt is hardly the only president to
address infrastructure in a big way. Perhaps the
largest and most far-reaching project was the In-
terstate Highway System, the brainchild of Presi-
dent Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican.
In fact, Biden can look for Big Government inspi-
ration all the way back to Alexander Hamilton, the
nation’s first Treasury secretary. Hamilton had the
federal government assume the states’ debts, created
the first U.S. central bank, and established Paterson,
N.J., as a planned industrial city.
And President Theodore Roosevelt practically
dug the Panama Canal himself by force of will
(plus the U.S. Navy)—a use of presidential power
his younger fifth cousin surely took note of.
By 1933, perhaps nowhere in the nation was hit
as hard by the Depression as the Ten-
nessee Valley, “the victim of outside
exploitation and the ignorance of its
own poverty-stricken inhabitants,”
Barron’swrote.
The idea of harnessing the Tennes-
see River for power had been around
for years. A World War I plan for a
hydroelectric-powered munitions
operation near Muscle Shoals, Ala.,
stalled when the war ended—but only
after the government had spent $
million,Barron’sreported, with an
additional $50 million needed to com-
plete the job.
Henry Ford offered to buy the proj-
ect for $5 million and run it as a private
power company, presenting a deal so
generous to himself that,Barron’s
wrote in 1922, “Mr. Ford’s wealth of
today and all the fabulous fortunes of
history would fade into insignificance.”
After Congress shot down Ford’s
proposal, President Herbert Hoover
in 1931 vetoed a bill that would have
made Muscle Shoals a government-
run concern.
Two years later, Roosevelt made
Muscle Shoals central to the TVA
proposal, whichBarron’sin 1934
termed “the only genuinely socialistic
project in the New Deal.”
The TVA delivered on much of its
mandate to raise living standards in
the seven-state region, and by the end
of World War II it was the largest elec-
tricity supplier in the U.S. Expansion
into coal-burning power in the 1950s
and nuclear in the 1970s followed.
In 2003, however, the TVA was
$25 billion in debt, according toBar-
ron’s, “raising the specter of a federal
bailout.” In the end, that wasn’t
needed, and the TVA marches on.
Eisenhower’s inspiration for the
Interstate Highway System came
from his own experiences—first with
the Army’s 1919 motor convoy that
needed 62 days to cross the U.S., and
then as World War II commander
who watched German troops speed
from front to front on the autobahns.
Ike’s $100 billion proposal, how-
ever, “terrifies those who always have
feared domination of the national
highways by Washington,”Barron’s
wrote in 1954. The scale alone “sends
shivers up and down some spines.”
The highway act won passage in
1956, and was soon contributing to the
postwar economic boom, and not just
in construction. For instance, in 1958,
Barron’sreported on exploding de-
mand for road signs—4,000 on the
new, 139-mile Connecticut Turnpike
alone. And in a 1966 advertisement in
Barron’s, Rockwell-Standard, a parts
maker for heavy-duty trucks, said it
was setting sales records thanks to the
Interstate Highway System–created
trend for “larger and heavier vehicles.”
Since then, Eisehower’s highways
have helped reshape American life,
creating the car culture that lives on
today—along with the sprawl that
goes with it.
Of course, when it comes to federal
spending, Biden also can draw upon
an example from his own career, the
Obama administration’s $800 billion
stimulus package of 2009. Some have
argued that it was too small; con-
versely, concern that the stimulus
would set off runaway inflation
proved unwarranted.
So, if you’re a Big Government
skeptic, keep that club handy.B
By KENNETH G. PRINGLE
Barron’swas critical of Franklin D. Roose-
velt’s Tennessee Valley Authority project,
pictured here in 1942. But FDR was hardly
alone in his infrastructure ambitions.On This Week
Feb. 21, 1955:Closed-circuit TV at Harold’s Club in
Reno nabs “anyone with an ace up his sleeve.”
Feb. 25, 1974:Polaroid says new
SX-70 camera hits “milestone”
sales as profit jumps 20%.
Alfred T. Palmer/Library of Congress (2)