The

Muscle Shoals Muscle Shoals is the largest city in Colbert County, Alabama, Colbert County, Alabama, United States. It is located along the Tennessee River in the northern part of the state and, as of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, the populati ...

Bill was designed to build a dam in the Tennessee River and sell government-produced electricity. Congress passed bills to harness energy from the Tennessee River, but presidents Coolidge and Hoover insisted that private enterprise should do the job, and vetoed the bills. The chief sponsor, Senator George Norris of Nebraska, had blocked a proposal from

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that mi ...

to develop the dam site. Hoover's veto message stated: :I am firmly opposed to the Government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens. There are national emergencies which require that the Government should temporarily enter the field of business, but they must be emergency actions and in matters where the cost of the project is secondary to much higher considerations. There are many localities where the Federal Government is justified in the construction of great dams and reservoirs, where navigation, flood control, reclamation, or stream regulation are of dominant importance, and where they are beyond capacity or purpose of private or local government capital to construct. In these cases power is often a by-product and should be disposed of by contract or lease. But for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand such an occasion to the major purpose of a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based. Norris demanded public power because he distrusted privately owned utilities. Norris said of Hoover: :Using his power of veto, he destroyed the Muscle Shoals bill--a measure designated to utilize the great government property at Muscle Shoals for the cheapening of fertilizer for American agriculture and utilization of the surplus power for the benefit of people without transmission distance of the development. The power people want no yardstick which would expose their extortionate rates so Hoover killed the bill after it had been passed by both houses of congress.Fro
"NORRIS CALLS FOR DEFEAT OF HOOVER IN 1932"
The idea for the Muscle Shoals Bill in 1933 became part of the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...

(TVA).

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Further reading