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Show Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and others). Among all regions there is a growing belief that water and related natural resources should be so developed and utilized as to encourage a greater proportion of employment and investment in the processing or fabrication of resources now shipped elsewhere in raw or relatively unfabricated state. This view, if oversimplified in application, might tend toward little regional economic nationalisms, and thus reduce our total national economic effi- ciency. But there is just as much danger, in its curt dismissal, that we shall overlook important possibilities for marked increases in national as well as regional economic efficiency and great im- provements in human welfare. The economic principle that efficiency requires the devotion of each locality to those commodities and services it can produce best and most cheaply is still sound, but its actual application no longer means that we must have such drastic regional specialization as has prevailed in the past. That specialization was based a century ago on the unevenness with which technological knowledge was distributed over the face of the Nation, on the limited distribution of a very few key energy resources required to power machines, on the monopoly "mysteries" of craft skills, on the un- even accumulations of capital, on the unevenness in availability of cheap transportation, on a lim- ited number of raw materials without effective substitutes, and on a relatively narrow range in kinds of foods, fibers, and fabricated products of all kinds available for production and human use. The initial locations of industry have also reaped the advantage of social habit and inertia which, despite the spread of urban civilization across the continent, still acts as an inhibitory force against the development in extractive areas of competi- tive or new economically efficient fabrication. Were we free of these historic inertias and in- stitutional distortions, it is quite likely that the influence of the new machine and chemical technologies developed during the past 75 years and of the social facilities that everywhere com- municate the knowledge of these techniques and skills, would work many important changes in the expansion and the dispersed location of fabricat- ing activities. How readily and universally transmissible are technical knowledge and man- ual skills was fully demonstrated during World War II. Throughout the length and breadth of the land new fabrication processes were quickly adopted by hundreds of small industrial plants. New skills were successfully taught to millions of workers. The universal availability of cheap electric energy and of power from internal com- bustion engines greatly expands the locational possibilities of efficient small as well as large-scale production. Activities of the Federal Government The Federal Government for many years has serviced the larger national industrial concerns through its Bureau of Standards, its Bureau of Mines' research in metallurgy and mining proc- esses, and by numerous other scientific agencies. But not until Congress created the Tennessee Valley Authority did it ever direct a battery of re- search facilities to the special purpose of examin- ing the efficient economic potential of a whole region. Never before did it so fully equip a regional agency with qualified technicians and research facilities, and legal powers to make their results ultimately available to the public. Never before have water, land, and minerals been studied so fully and integrally to see how they might efficiently contribute to the production and incomes of a regional population. The Commission is not passing upon the merits of the valley authority form of Federal organiza- tion, for that lies beyond the scope of its assign- ment. It believes, however, that the kind of approach begun by the TVA to water resources development and its relationship with the land, mineral, and forest resources within a given region blazes a trail that should be followed in other regions by whatever Federal administrative struc- ture the President and Congress decide to be most suitable. The time has come when to help the people of the underdeveloped or wastefully abused regions make the most efficient use of their basic resources, a governmental focus of attention, research, and 21 |