Background
Moody and introverted, he honored his Quaker mother's puritan goals in life and religion, rejecting his father's easygoing social attitudes.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Arthur Morgan
Edit Profile
Education
Morgan, Arthur Ernest, , Ohio 1878 1975 Male College President Conservationist Engineer (Civil) conservationist, college president, civil engineer, and first engineer of the Tennessee Valley Authority, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of John D. Morgan, engineer, and Anna Frances Wiley, a homemaker.
He attended local schools in Cincinnati, and, at age ten when the family moved to St. Cloud, Minn. , completed its three-year high school in 1896.
Self-taught, and a seeker of principles, young Morgan worked at various trades away from home, briefly attended the University of Colorado in 1898, and returned to pick up his father's land-care and surveying occupation.
Morgan studied flood control at home and abroad, and he designed his Miami Conservancy District with dams deliberately kept empty to meet emergencies.
Career
In 1909 he organized the Morgan Engineering Company, in Memphis, Tenn. , which revived an estimated two million acres of wetlands.
In Septenber 1904 he married Urania Jones, who died in 1905, leaving him with an infant son.
He followed such a pattern also in dam work done in Pueblo, Colo.
He encouraged local cooperative ventures and modernized Mann's old work-study program, searching for challenging off-campus jobs as part of the curriculum; under his tenure, Antioch's enrollment increased by 500 percent.
Moreover, he planned to educate the farmers in their own best interest, as he had his workers in Dayton.
Leaders in the area protested this program as interfering with local mores and preferences.
Morgan found himself increasingly isolated among New Deal managers and educated partisans.
Unused to controversy and awkward in argument, he complained publicly that he was being bypassed by his associates.
When Morgan was unable to produce evidence, he was discharged from the TVA Board in 1938.
Working through his small organization, Community Service, he began to correspond with activists in towns seeking ideas for improvement.
In 1944, he published a book on Edward Bellamy, arguing that Bellamy's famous Looking Backwards (1888) was not a "utopia" but a reasonable social statement that had influenced the New Deal.
Morgan's theory was never fully debated.
It cited numerous successes, including businesses in his own Yellow Springs.
His message unofficially reached businessmen and town leaders.
In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Morgan made a strong effort to prevent the U. S. Corps of Engineers from flooding Seneca Indian land in Pennsylvania.
Although his case was lost, his enduring efforts turned attention on Indian rights.
His Dams and Other Disasters (1971) technically analyzed the corps's bureaucratic policies.
His last book, The Making of the T. V. A. (1974), written when he was ninety-six years of age, found him willing to concede error, but not principle.
[Morgan's more than forty books amply illustrate his views.
The Seedman (1933) serves as a metaphoric overview of his "pilot plant" principle for improving society.
See also his My World (1928) and Search for a Purpose (1955); Lucy Morgan, Finding His World (1927); Clarence J. Leuba, A Road to Creativity (1971); and Walter Kahoe.
Arthur Morgan (1977).
For a detailed negative portrayal, see Roy Talbert, Jr. , FDR's Utopian (1987).
An obituary is in the New York Times, Nov. 17, 1975. ]
Religion
Morgan's larger dreams of a better society were expressed in the attention he gave his workers, who were provided with model villages and good wages, and even with suggestions for books to improve their minds.
Industries for Small Communities (1953) made a case for small, independent businesses that could operate at a profit outside of monopolies.
Connections
Morgan was married twice.
-
Born
-
Died
1975 (aged 97) -
Religion
society independent