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Show parison of gains in the valley from before the depression to the postwar years, with correspond- ing gains in the entire area of the valley States and throughout the country. From 1929 to 1948 income payments to individuals in the val- ley increased 249 percent, as compared with 233 percent in the valley States and 149 percent for the United States as a whole. These reflected not only increases in the number of people re- ceiving incomes but also increases in per capita income of 197,178, and 107 percent, respectively. Similarly, from 1929 to 1947, production workers employed in manufacturing increased 61 percent in the valley as compared with 54 per- cent in seven valley States, 48 percent for the entire Southeast and 42 percent for the country as a whole. Although a moderate general de- cline of employment after 1948 was somewhat accentuated in the Tennessee Valley, because of the predominance of certain affected industries, the general picture was not materially altered. While some of these improvements in economic well-being may have been partly attributable to the dam building and other programs of the TVA itself, it is clear that private enterprise was finding new opportunity for production and trade because of the programs of water and land devel- opment which had been comprehensively planned and were being carried through. Regional development has been stimulated through the combined efforts of the TVA, the States, and private and local institutions in several ways. One outstanding method is the research program in behalf of industry and agriculture. A successful illustration of the significance of public research upon regional development is the work on frozen foods. This began with straw- berries, a widespread crop in the valley but with declining income returns in 1933 because of dif- ficulties in the marketing process. A TVA- financed economic study by the University of Tennessee indicated a great opportunity for frozen berries and valley vegetables. Systematic in- vestigation of freezing processes gave a better berry product. Simultaneously, the Tennessee State Experiment Station began its successful work on breeding more productive varieties. The research technicians then turned their at- tention to other valley products and have made major contributions in many fields.14 There is space to list only a few other typical improvements in the processing and use of valley resources resulting from the regional leadership of TVA with the cooperation of State and local institutions. These include (1) the improvement of a pressure cooker used by small locally owned mills for extracting oil from cotton seed which permits the latter to compete efficiently with big, distantly located mills and thus keep oil cake and meal residues in the valley for refertilization of its soil, (2) exploration by TVA geologists re- sulting in the discovery of important coal-bearing lands adjacent to cheap river navigation, (3) research with the abundant clays in the region resulting in improvement of processes for using kaolin in American pottery production, (4) de- velopment by Georgia Experiment Station tech- nicians, financed by TVA, of an inexpensive machine for preparing the plentiful mica deposits for commercial use, and (5) the financing of State technicians to develop a number of impor- tant machines which increase farm efficiency. Far from superseding private enterprise, these activities have helped farmers, businessmen, and investors in the Tennessee Valley discover op- portunities for the effective and continuous use of valley resources. In so doing they have increased their incomes and raised their standards of living. TVA has helped to redress, to some extent, the imbalance of research talent as between that re- gion and other parts of the country. It has done this by giving financial aid to enable the personnel of State and local institutions to make the most of their research talents, and using its own labora- tories, experimental plants, and technicians to start investigations that no other agency was pre- pared to undertake but which promised socially desirable opportunities for profit for a large num- ber of valley people-businessmen, farmers, and workers. M There are now nine private companies in the valley using freezing techniques, processes, or designs introduced or developed by TVA; 125 plants are using strawberry slicing machines it developed; 85 frozen-locker plants are using its developments for freezing foods. 36 |