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An account of Franklin Roosevelt's battle against the power industry to bring electricity to rural communities in the United States.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in the depths of the Depression, high-tension, or high voltage, power lines had been marching across the country for decades, delivering urban Americans a parade of life-transforming inventions from electric lights and radios to refrigerators and washing machines. But, most rural Americans still lived in the punishing pre-electric era, unconnected to the grid, their lives consumed and bodies broken by backbreaking chores.
High Tension is the story of FDR's battle against the "Power Trust," an elaborate Wall Street-controlled web of holding companies, to electrify all of America, even when the corrupt captains of the industry and their cronies (led by a formidable and honest champion, Wendell Willkie, whose role in the battle, propelled him to a presidential bid to unseat Roosevelt in 1940) cried that running lines to rural areas would not be profitable and that in a free market there would simply have to be a divide, between the electricity haves and have-nots.
Roosevelt knew better. And in this story of shrewd political maneuvering, controversial legislation, New Deal government organizations like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the packing of Federal courts, towering business figures, greedy villains, and the crying needs of farmers and other rural citizens desperate for services critical to their daily lives, John A. Riggs has, chronicled democracy's greatest balancing act of government intervention with private market forces. Here is the tale of how FDR's efforts brought affordable electricity to all Americans, powered the industrial might that won World War II, and established a model for public-private solutions today in areas, such as, transportation infrastructure, broadband, and health care.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in the depths of the Depression, high-tension, or high voltage, power lines had been marching across the country for decades, delivering urban Americans a parade of life-transforming inventions from electric lights and radios to refrigerators and washing machines. But, most rural Americans still lived in the punishing pre-electric era, unconnected to the grid, their lives consumed and bodies broken by backbreaking chores.
High Tension is the story of FDR's battle against the "Power Trust," an elaborate Wall Street-controlled web of holding companies, to electrify all of America, even when the corrupt captains of the industry and their cronies (led by a formidable and honest champion, Wendell Willkie, whose role in the battle, propelled him to a presidential bid to unseat Roosevelt in 1940) cried that running lines to rural areas would not be profitable and that in a free market there would simply have to be a divide, between the electricity haves and have-nots.
Roosevelt knew better. And in this story of shrewd political maneuvering, controversial legislation, New Deal government organizations like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the packing of Federal courts, towering business figures, greedy villains, and the crying needs of farmers and other rural citizens desperate for services critical to their daily lives, John A. Riggs has, chronicled democracy's greatest balancing act of government intervention with private market forces. Here is the tale of how FDR's efforts brought affordable electricity to all Americans, powered the industrial might that won World War II, and established a model for public-private solutions today in areas, such as, transportation infrastructure, broadband, and health care.