The Tennessee Valley—A Challenge to Foresters

Where other governments have undertaken large-scale regional planning of land nse, the enterprises rest on absolute dictatorship, and the use of coercion. The Tennessee Valley project is an attempt to accomplish the same end through coöperation and uncoerced action, and in accord with truly American democratic principles. As the title to this article implies, the undertaking has an especial appeal to the forester since so much of the land is not needed for agriculture and will play its proper part in the co[ö]rdinated scheme only if it continually produces successive timber crops or its forest recreation values are adequately developed, and since, furthermore, the need for flood control and erosion correction require such widespread maintenance of protection forest cover. The T. V. A. is indeed one of the major forestry undertakings of the New Deal.