MINERAL ORES AND WATER POWER 



people an exceedingly useful measure for counting the 

 costs all the costs of similar experiments. Does the 

 water-borne commerce of the Tennessee River justify 

 the investment and expense of the TVA program to 

 maintain it as a navigable stream? What have been the 

 costs, the real costs, in realistic results as well as tax- 

 payers' money, of reforestation, housing projects, TVA 

 publicity, phosphate mining, fertilizer manufacture, or 

 any other of its many and growing activities? 



Hydro-electric power is the heart of the whole TVA 

 project. Its two million kilowatts are its greatest, most 

 costly asset. Its major objective is to employ this power 

 for the best benefit of all the people of the Tennessee 

 Valley. This big block of power is an unparalleled op- 

 portunity. 



Even jaundiced opponents of the TVA admit that 

 power rates to the individual consumer on farms, in 

 hamlets, in big and little cities have been lowered. 

 What they protest so vehemently is that this saving is 

 but a trifle of the incomes of the people served, an 

 utterly insignificant personal gain that cannot be justi- 

 fied by the mountainous power investment, and that 

 these lower rates to individuals have been an expensive 

 personal gift from their fellow taxpayers. 



Let us shelve all these dollars-and-cents arguments 

 both of critics and defenders and count the costs of 

 TVA power in quite a different way. 



For years the Tennessee Valley was an acute example 

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