sition, gradually becoming more like the original 

 growth; but pine and yellow-poplar, particularly, 

 have gained through the reversion process. Hall (4) 

 pointed out some 40 years ago that pine not un- 

 commonly formed practically pure stands on the old 

 fields of east Tennessee and very often occurred in 

 groups covering 20 to 50 percent of an old field. In 

 the original forests, pine was confined to the poorer 

 sites and rarely occupied more than 10 to 15 percent 

 of the ground. Yellow-poplar, too, frequently came 

 in pure on abandoned lands, or at least comprised a 

 large part of the new stands in contrast to its more 

 scattered occurrence in the original forests. 



Industry 



Industry grew at a slow pace until the last decade 

 of the 19th century. The number of employees in- 

 creased from 49,000 in 1899 to 142,000 in 1929. 



Value added by manufacture rose from $38 million 

 in 1899 to $323 million in 1929. The depression of 

 the early 1930's set industry back here as elsewhere, 

 but since 1935, industry has spurted ahead more 

 rapidly than in most parts of the country. By 1947, 

 the number of employees reached 221,000; value 

 added by manufacture, $958 million. 



Much of the impetus to recent industrial growth 

 has come from the abundance of cheap hydroelectric 

 power in the Tennessee River valley (fig. 9). The 

 TVA, which began in 1933, operated the largest 

 integrated power-producing system in the United 

 States by 1945. It had a generating capacity in that 

 year of 2% million kilowatts, a major part of it in 

 Tennessee. 



Power development has been made possible by a 

 great surface-water resource. The Cumberland and 

 Tennessee Rivers, with their major tributaries, form 

 water svstems that drain most of the State. Their 



10 



Figure 8. — Many acres have been ruined for farming by severe soil erosion. (Tenn. Conservation Dept pho'n.) 



Forest Resource Report No. 9, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



