“Electricity for All”: The Electric Home and Farm Authority and the Politics of Mass Consumption, 1932–1935

The following article traces TVA director David Lilienthal's efforts to establish the Electric Home and Farm Authority the Tennessee Valley and analyzes the outcome of that program in the early 1930s. The essay demonstrates that, contrary to some interpretations, administrators like Lilienthal were advocating state-sponsored consumption-driven economic growth well before the late 1930s.