The Hubris of the Engineers

Abstract

Essay Reviews THE HUBRIS OF THE ENGINEERS Prisoners ofMyth: The Leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933— 1990. By Erwin C. Hargrove. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi + 374; notes, index. $45.00. Aren’t you tired of bureaucratic and political interference with your professional life? Don’t you get sick of the senseless obstacles thrown up against your efforts to do your job as only you know how best to do it? After all, everything is so plainly delineated by the canons of your profession that people should have faith in your disin­ terested expertise. They should know that your peers in the profes­ sion, who are the only properjudges, will evaluate your performance and reward or punish you accordingly. If this is the way you think, then think again. Better yet, read this book. Has Erwin Hargrove got a story for you! It’s a full-fledged scholarly analysis of a great organization trapped by its own ideology of professionalism. It’s a story with a brilliant beginning and a disas­ trous ending. And, although Hargrove does not choose to tell it in quite this way, it’s an epic, a bona fide Greek tragedy. Like all epics, it starts with unforgettable dramatis personae. First comes Senator George W. Norris, determined to keep the World War I project Wilson Dam, with its precious electricity, from falling into the hands of the “power trust.” Presidents Coolidge and Hoover veto Norris’s bills. But then comes Franklin D. Roosevelt, who strengthens and signs Norris’s bill and sets out to make the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) a crown jewel of the New Deal. In 1933, enter three more players, TVA’s uncommonly talented initial Board of Directors. They are the eccentric but profound engi­ neer Arthur E. Morgan, the venerable agriculturist Harcourt A. Morgan, and the brilliant young lawyer David E. Lilienthal. These three do the job marked out by Norris and Roosevelt. They do it extraordinarily well, and they stay at it for a long time. Arthur Mor­ gan feuds with his colleagues and has to be fired by Roosevelt in 1938. David Lilienthal remains until 1945 when, now world famous, he leaves to chair the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1948, Harcourt Permission to reprint a review printed in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 1007 1008 Thomas K. McCraw Morgan retires at the age of eighty-one, more beloved in the valley than ever. Together the three founding directors accomplished what historian Henry Steele Commager once described as “probably the greatest peacetime achievement of twentieth-century America.” Working with an elite staff that came to exceed 40,000 dedicated men and women, many of them available only because the Great Depression had killed employment prospects elsewhere, they built a series of gleaming dams to tame the wild Tennessee River. In the process, they created a chain of lakes forming a 600-mile inland waterway with terrific recreational facilities. In a swords-to-plowshares operation, they manufactured millions of tons of fertilizer at the chemical plant adjacent to Wilson Dam, which had been designed in 1918 to produce nitrates for muni­ tions. Eventually they led the world in the arcane field of fertilizer technology. All the while they brought progressive farming tech­ niques to the people of the valley. Federal appropriations got the big construction projects going, but TVA soon became more or less self-sustaining, as its legislation re­ quired. The new dams produced electric power, which TVA sold at very cheap rates. Through the years, people bought more and more of it. Supply seemed to create its own demand. The cost curve of electric power bent downward without interruption for thirty-five years. Ever-cheaper power became a secular religion which, together with the doctrine of multiple-use development of water resources, fused the TVA organization into a coherent whole. Since electricity supply is a natural monopoly, TVA as the most efficient producer managed to drive private competitors out of busi­ ness. In 1939 it bought out Wendell Willkie’s Tennessee Electric Power Company and parts of other firms. It promoted its own net­ work of affiliated municipal and cooperative power...