Closely look at the following four documents (lettered a to d), and then write an essay analyzing the effects of the Tennessee Valley Authority Act on the citizens and private power utility companies in the region. Use the documents and your knowledge of the Tennessee Valley Authority to write the essay. Daytonians had been struggling along for years with an outmoded municipal electric system which had its current generated in the steam plant of a local sawmill. Already the city had been forced to pay for new equipment without having any part in its management. In 1934 the city was called upon to invest money for the patching up of this decrepit private plant, which was daily threatening to close down and leave the city without power.

City commissioners talked the matter over. “If the TVA is going to start giving people around here cheap electricity,” they reasoned, "by gosh, Dayton is more entitled to it than anybody else." So at the request (one might almost say demand) of the commissioners, TVA worked out a system for local distribution. Though Dayton’s rates had been about the lowest of any municipal system in the section, the following table shows what this transfer meant to her in dollars and cents:

Rates Before TVA
First 20 kilowatt-hours. . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 cents each
Next 30 kilowatt-hours . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 cents each
Next 50 kilowatt-hours and over . . . . . 5 cents each
Present TVA Rates
First 40 kilowatt-hours. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 cents each
Next 150 kilowatt-hours . . . . . . . . . . . 2 cents each
Next 200 kilowatt-hours . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 cent each
Next 1,000 kilowatt-hours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 mills

Briefly, TVA cut the average Daytonian’s electric bill by about two thirds. In the five years since the contract was made the number of power users in Dayton has increased from 637 to 923. And the total number of kilowatt-hours per consumer has almost doubled. Meanwhile the city of Dayton has made a net profit of $58,000, and now makes a monthly profit of almost $4,000.

—July 1, 1940, “A Valley to Hold To,” By George C. Stoney