The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 689A huge dust cloud engulfs Dodge City, Kansas in 1935.
Source: Kansas State Historical Society.
of dust through Nebraska and Kansas. In May, after
the fields had been plowed, more windstorms scat-
tered the seeds and topsoil.
The summer of 1934 was dry, especially in the
Dakotas and western Kansas. These farmers were
accustomed to dry weather, but the topsoil had been
loosened through dryland farming. Strong winds
scooped up the dried-out dirt and blew it in heaving
clouds throughout the plains. Dust, forced into peo-
ple’s lungs, induced “dust pneumonia,” a respiratory
ailment that sometimes proved fatal.
The winds devastated wheat and corn. Over 30 per-
cent of the crops in much of North Dakota, South
Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Oklahoma panhandle
failed. Two years later, another drought produced similar
results. Coming in the midst of the Great Depression,
this second calamity proved more than many farmers
could bear. Tens of thousands abandoned their farms.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
Although Roosevelt could do little about the mid-
western droughts, he did propose a major initiative
to alter the economic infrastructure of the upper
South. During the Great War the government had
constructed a hydroelectric plant at Muscle Shoals,
Alabama, to provide power for factories manufactur-
ing synthetic nitrate explosives. After 1920 farm
groups and public power enthusiasts, led by Senator
George W. Norris of Nebraska, had blocked admin-
istration plans to turn these facilities over to private
capitalists, but their efforts to have the site operated
by the government had been defeated by presiden-
tial vetoes.
During his first hundred days, Roosevelt pro-
posed a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to
implement a broad experiment in social planning.
Besides expanding the hydroelectric plants at Muscle
Shoals and developing nitrate manufacturing in order
to produce cheap fertilizers, he envisioned a coordi-
nated program of soil conservation, reforestation, and
industrialization.
Over the objections of private power companies,
led by Wendell L. Willkie of the Commonwealth and
Southern Corporation, Congress passed the TVA Act
in May 1933. This law created a board authorized to
build dams, power plants, and transmission lines and
to sell fertilizers and electricity to individuals and local
communities. The board could undertake flood con-
trol, soil conservation, and reforestation projects and
improve the navigation of the river. Although the
TVA never became the comprehensive regional plan-
ning organization some of its sponsors had antici-
pated, it improved the standard of living of millions of
inhabitants of the valley. In addition to producing
electricity and fertilizers and providing a “yardstick”