page_title: David E. Lilienthal
section_title: Lilienthal and the Tennessee Valley Authority
hierarchical_section_title: David E. Lilienthal / Lilienthal and the Tennessee Valley Authority
caption_attribution_description: English: This is an slighty cropped image of Tennessee Valley Authority Director David E. Lilienthal listening to testimony before a committee of the United States Congress on May 25, 1938. The committee was investigating charges brought against the TVA by its former chairman, Arthur E. Morgan.
context_page_description: David Eli Lilienthal was an American attorney and public administrator, best known for his Presidential Appointment to head Tennessee Valley Authority and later the Atomic Energy Commission. He had practiced public utility law and led the Wisconsin Public Utilities Commission.
  Later he was co-author with Dean Acheson of the 1946 Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, which outlined possible methods for international control of nuclear weapons. As chair of the AEC, he was one of the pioneers in civilian management of nuclear power resources.
context_section_description: Lilienthal's credentials for being appointed to the three-person board overseeing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) were earned as a member of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission under Wisconsin's innovative governor Philip La Follette. Lilienthal performed very well in that post, and he was aided in joining the TVA by the persistent lobbying of his old law professor Frankfurter.
  The TVA was established so that the Federal government could develop and distribute cheap hydroelectric power into rural areas that were not served by private utilities. Developed as recovery began from the Great Depression, the TVA was envisioned by its supporters as a federal development vehicle to modernize the region's infrastructure through electricity, attract industry, and improve the economic and social lives of rural people. Accordingly, the TVA also established extensive education programs, and a library service that distributed books in the many rural hamlets that lacked a library. Opponents led by Wendell Willkie said the TVA was hostile to private enterprise and socialistic.
caption: David E. Lilienthal listens to testimony at a Congressional hearing in 1938 called to investigate charges brought against the TVA by its former chair, Arthur E. Morgan.
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