Theodore
the war was over was not foreseen. It's not so much that there wasn't so much
demand after the Civil War, it's just that marketing techniques are so much
more sophisticated, radio, television, advertising-you've got a much better
market, and that's why we didn't have a big depression after World War II-at
least that is my theory about why we didn't have a depression. Now, an
economist would have something else to say about it, I'm sure.
I don't remember when the Corps stopped making cost estimates based on 1940
price levels, but until it did it looked as if here was this agency trying to get its
nose under the tent and then, once it got the project authorized-say an
million project authorized-they'd spend million on it. Some of that is still
going on. For example, on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which was
one of the projects authorized about that time.
1946. Right.
And so there was a feeling that these agencies were only interested in
aggrandizing. Then there were the people who were being hurt, the people
whose lands were being flooded. For example, projects like at Tuttle Creek
where the Corps incurred the animosity of people whose families had lived on
those homesteads for a hundred years.
There's always been that kind of a backlash against the Bureau and the Corps
built up, but I don't think-maybe I've been too close to it to see it-1 don't
think there has really been any feeling, ideologically, that these agencies were
getting too big. Now, there's another view expressed by a gentleman up in
Minnesota named [Adolph] Ackerman who's written books citing a book called
I can't remember who wrote it.
Wittvogel.
He wrote that book, alleging that governments control their people by
controlling their water supply. Adolf Ackerman has gotten a few of the
engineers, for example, who are, by nature, conservative, to cite Wittvogel
against the Corps and the Bureau. But when you really look at it, they are
attributing motives to government engineers that I don't think are there.
Admittedly, there have been some ideological issues like the public power and
other issues like that, that have-that might, in some people, might have been
termed as ideological, and this has led some people into fear of government
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