The Great Depression in the United States left the Tennessee Valley (which includes parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi) poverty-stricken. In 1933, early in his presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority as part of the “New Deal,” his plan to build the infrastructure of the country, put people to work, and help bring the country out of the Depression.
The charge to the TVA was to provide: “1) the maximum amount of flood control; 2) the maximum development of the Tennessee River for navigation purposes; 3) the maximum generation of electric power consistent with flood control and navigation; 4) the proper use of marginal lands; 5) the proper method of reforestation of all lands in said drainage basin suitable for reforestation; and 6) the economic and social well-being of the people living in the Tennessee River basin.”
RC’s founder, Frederick Gardner Cottrell, suggested to the TVA that Research Corporation might be able to help the Authority, and it was decided that Research Corporation would help find a new, inexpensive method of producing phosphoric acid for use in fertilizer for use in the Valley. Development of such a process had been under way for several years at the Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture.
In 1933, Research Corporation and the Tennessee Valley Authority made an agreement in which Research Corporation would investigate methods of producing phosphoric acid, and then undertake engineering, design, construction and preliminary operations of a commercial plant for producing the acid. Phosphoric acid is used to make phosphate salts for fertilizers, in dental cements, in the preparation of albumin derivatives, and in the sugar and textile industries.
The TVA was presided over by three Board members with differing concepts of the direction the TVA should take. At the end of the first year of the agreement, then-president of Research Corporation Howard Poillon was obviously feeling frustrated when he noted in his 1934 internal annual report, “…I state with considerable regret that our work has left much to be desired in the minds of those in whose hands we placed our results.” He continued, “…our ideas of operating methods to be used to reach a mutually desired end are so divergent from the methods now in use by the Authority that we find ourselves entirely divorced from that sympathetic understanding essential for future cooperation.” He concluded, “While we are still obligated to perform further service for the Tennessee Valley Authority as its option, it is my sincere hope that we will not be called on to act.”
The TVA encountered many setbacks and was involved in many controversies, but it brought electricity to thousands of people at an affordable price, controlled the flood waters of the Tennessee River and improved navigation, and introduced modern agriculture techniques to the area.