The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Tennessee Valley Authority

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The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Tennessee Valley Authority had positive impacts on work and the environment during the great depression. The bill proposing the Civilian Conservation Corps was voted on and passed on March 31, 1933 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In addition, the Tennessee Valley Authority was formed May 18 of this same year to work on easing environmental strains in the Tennessee Valley. Roosevelt’s goal when he became president was to improve the economy and environment, and to help raise America from the depression. When he had been governor of New York he had created a public works program similar to the TVA on a smaller scale and it had been met with success. As a result he was encouraged to expand that idea to the Tennessee Valley. The TVA was able to hire many people and remain largely self-sufficient by selling electricity to millions of people in the surrounding area. The selling of electricity was made possible by the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), which prevented monopolies through public ownership by the government. These programs continued to be very successful throughout the Great Depression and on August 31, 1935, the number of workers in the CCC reached its peak. As the depression ended and more jobs became readily available, the programs started to become less popular, and in 1940 the CCC officially ended.Despite the program’s popularity, the TVA’s constitutionality was called into question in the 1936 supreme court case Ashwander vs. Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA was declared constitutional a few months after the accusations (Shlaes 238), 208. A few years after the CCC had, the TVA reached its peak of production having more than 28,000 people working on var...

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...iguring the Dollar Value of Flood Damage Averted." TVA: River Neighbors. Tennessee Valley Authority, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. .

H.R. 7, 73 Cong., U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority. (1941) (enacted). Print

Lacy, Leslie Alexander. The Soil Soldiers: The Civilian Conservation Corps in the Great Depression. Radnor, PA: Chilton, 1976. Print.

Magoc, Chris J. Environmental Issues in American History: A Reference Guide with Primary Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006. Print.

McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941. New York: Times, 1993. Print.

Shlaes, Amity. The Forgotten Man. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007. Print.

"Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)." U-S-History.com. Online Highways LLC, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .

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