Electric City
The Lost History of Ford and Edison's American Utopia
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The extraordinary, unknown story of two giants of American history—Henry Ford and Thomas Edison—and their attempt to create an electric-powered city of tomorrow on the Tennessee River
During the roaring twenties, two of the most revered and influential men in American business proposed to transform one of the country’s poorest regions into a dream technological metropolis, a shining paradise of small farms, giant factories, and sparkling laboratories. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s “Detroit of the South” would be ten times the size of Manhattan, powered by renewable energy, and free of air pollution. And it would reshape American society, introducing mass commuting by car, use a new kind of currency called “energy dollars,” and have the added benefit (from Ford and Edison's view) of crippling the growth of socialism.
The whole audacious scheme almost came off, with Southerners rallying to support what became known as the Ford Plan. But while some saw it as a way to conjure the future and reinvent the South, others saw it as one of the biggest land swindles of all time. They were all true.
Electric City is a rich chronicle of the time and the social backdrop, and offers a fresh look at the lives of the two men who almost saw the project to fruition, the forces that came to oppose them, and what rose in its stead: a new kind of public corporation called the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the greatest achievements of the New Deal. This is a history for a wide audience, including readers interested in American history, technology, politics, and the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hager (Ten Drugs) delivers a diligent history of the "Detroit of the South": a plan by Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to build a 75-mile urban corridor along the banks of the Tennessee River in the Muscle Shoals region of Alabama. In 1918, the U.S. government started construction on a hydroelectric dam and two nitrate plants in the area to ensure that the national supply of nitrate (a critical ingredient in fertilizer and munitions) would not be disrupted during WWI. But the war ended before the dam could be completed, and government funding for the project dried up. In 1921, Ford and Edison offered to lease the dam and use it to power a sprawling, futuristic city that would be run entirely on electricity and bring millions of jobs to the area. Hager recounts breathless media excitement for the proposal, but Nebraska senator George Norris blocked it in Congress, arguing that it was an attempt by wealthy elites to profit from a public resource. Ultimately, the completed dam helped power the Tennessee Valley Authority's rural electrification program in the 1930s. With incisive character sketches and insights into the tension between private and public interests, this is an illuminating portrait of a little-known chapter in American history.
