The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-02-18
TUESDAY. FEBRUARY 10, 1885.
THE IVA DECISION


WHEN the government makes something it has
right to sell it, That u.s. if the government is
acting in the exercise of some properly delegated
power.
There we have the essence of the broadly sig
nfcart Supreme Court iva decision.
And SO the greatest social and economic expert
ment of our time gets the green light
Electricity was the issue around which the great
court battle ragged Electricity is the by-product of
the IVA dams. The Tennessee River is navigabls
stream and as such falls within the of properly
delegated Federal power. Hence the government
dispose OF its electricity it pleases, with one
say 1t nay. And thus is disspated the deliberately
constructed opposition which lawyers for the private
power companies had built up
Had it been determined that the government
not acting under authority properly delegated it
would have been another and a sad story for IVA.
But as u.s. IVA gees ahead.
Because human nature likes fight, because IVA
developed early into battle between a great gov
eminent and great power interests and because the
contest conferred the question of the sale of cleo
tricity, what iva means in its larger aspects has
been pretty much lost in the scufne Electricity has
been magnfed out of all proportion to its real i'm
portance in the whole IVA scheme of things
WHEAT is TvA' ,. , no
munity rugged individualism." 1t is the far-fung
effort of vast section to throw back the forces of
erosion and decay-and to rebuild. 1t is struggle
to reclaim the most precious of nations possessions
the land. Socially, it seeks to make happier and
comfortable the lives of large population In
& economics, it promises by increasing the standard
of living of that population, by creating DESIRES
f0r To he
fulfilled, to create markets for industrial
products-the potentialities of which are more i'm
portsnt than any markets which could be developed
abroad
The most vivid and most concise commentary
on the Tennessee Valley have is para
graph from recent article by Ernie Pyle which
said:
To-day all these Southern Rivers muddy.
But our early explorers recorded how clear and
beautiful the rivers were then. That means that
before white men came the land was covered with
trees and shrubs which held the SOIL But years of
blowing and planting without deep roots have al
lowed the rains to wash the soil down hill. And
once a gully gets started it grows rapidly. There
billions of gullies in the South and the rain
washing millions of freight train loads of soil away
every year and it goes down and makes rivers
muddy and is finally carried out to sea- wasted for
ever"
That presents the rough outline of the whole
picture. Into it the rest of the detail will be drawn
If IVA is brought to completion. And so have,
going on day after day. the building of bulwarks
to catch the silt it washes down, the terracng of
the slopes the construction of dams to prevent the
floods which heretofore have been so devastating
che manufacture of fertilizer to bring the "verve"
back to the SOIL the rotation of crops for the pur-
poses of conservation the sowing of egumes to keep
the earth in place, the planting of millions of trees
to reforest the land, and ultimately the merging of
factory and agricultural life as the final plan I'M
folds.
a LII that is IVA in only the most sketchy of
= forms. great section of America is lettering
ITSELF making test in tremendous laboratory,
test which bids fair to produce formula that will
be of untold service to other sections of the nation
and to generations as yet unborn
AS part of it all comes electricity from the wa
ter that is impounded in the dams water that no
longer will ravish that Southern soil; electricity
which the government under the Supreme Court de-
cision is now at liberty to sell.
That electricity is important. 1t means revenue
with which the test may be pursued 1t means light
and heat and service in homes hitherto unvisted by
its blessings And unless miss our guess 1t
more volume and prosperity for the very pri-
vate utilities which have fought IVA bitterly. For
such territory that not be built to the maxi
mum of its social and economic possibilities without
helping every one and every institution now en-
gagged in business there.
But electricity is by no means all. And let 1t be
hoped that the nation it watches the unfolding
of the drama that is iva will view it from now on
not in the narrow light of legal contest but in all
the majesty of its true perspective.
AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION