TVA DIRECTOR LECTURES HERE

Speaking before a fiscal policy seminar in Littauer Lounge yesterday afternoon, David Lilienthal, Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, explained the function of his organization as the refinement of method and techniques. "TVA has had the task of choosing each step carefully and discarding dogmas," said Lilienthal, in his first appearance at Harvard in two years.

The Tennessee Valley Authority Act was passed almost 12 years ago, and at the time and for a number of years thereafter it was harshly criticized by a considerable segment of the population. Lilienthal now finds it hard to get accustomed to a tremendous change in public opinion, even in the conservative press, and remarked that he is used "to being patted on the back with a foot."

Competition for Utilities

The TVA, he said, was originally thought of by its foes as a big federal power company designed to compete with and envelop private companies, a force destructive to private enterprise. "Actually," he continued, "it is the natural outcome of the conservation policies of Theodore Roosevelt, as well as those of Franklin Roosevelt." The late Wendell Willkie, in the midst of the battle between the TVA and Commonwealth and Southern, said to Lilienthal that "no region in which the government so interfered would ever be prosperous again because investors would be discouraged. But the TVA, its head maintained, has stimulated private industry and activity through public expenditure, public activity, and public enterprise.

In education the people of the Valley, in necessarily and beneficially expanding its scope, TVA has come a long way from its original conception as mere public works. Lilienthal maintained. Because of its decentralized administration. "TVA has had a grass-roots opportunity to work close enough to the industries and peoples of the Valley to understand their needs."