The Tennessee Valley Authority burst upon the Depression-era South in the 1930s as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s many programs intended to stimulate recovery.
TVA was going to create lots of jobs by building big dams on the Tennessee River – harnessing the river for “navigation, conservation and flood control.”
Oh, incidentally, the TVA dams would produce electricity through “byproduct” hydro-generation at its dams.
But TVA’s electricity turned out to be the “tail that wagged the dog.”
The threat of TVA’s taxpayer-subsidized “cheap” socialized electricity forced the free enterprise Tennessee Electric Power Co. and its parent Commonwealth & Southern Co. into surrender.