Word: mckellars
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Valley of the Tennessee were ill-faring land. Floods devastated the lowlands and rains eroded the deforested hills. There was little industry. The malaria-ridden people were as impoverished as the soil. Like Aesop's fabled dog in the manger, Tennessee's paunchy, vituperative Senator Kenneth McKellar championed the land and the people; he wanted no improvements without patronage. When the vast, experimental Tennessee Valley Authority was created in 1933 he set out to force the spoils system upon...
...failed. Year after year TVA shunned politics, awarded jobs on a merit basis. Shaking with rage, Kenneth McKellar time & again rose in the Senate to denounce quiet, smooth-faced TVA Chairman David Eli Lilienthal, 45. Time & again, in the hope of clubbing TVA into submission, he sought to bring its day-by-day finances under the control of Congress. Frustrated, he bided his time and nursed his grudge. This spring many a Washington politico believed that the 76-year-old spoilsman had TVA squarely in his sights at last. His enemy, David Lilienthal, faced reappointment for a nine-year term...
...President coolly announced the appointment only 24 hours after beet-nosed Mr. McKellar and his Tennessee colleague, Senator Tom Stewart, had called at the White House to try to head it off. Said McKellar: "We protested with all the vigor and zeal we have...
Loud-mouthed Kenneth McKellar had been roaring against businesslike, liberal-minded TVAman Lilienthal for several years, had carried on a patronage feud with him with all the passion of a home-state mountaineer. But last week McKellar discovered that, despite his new power in the Senate, he had been boxed in. Good friend Truman had already enhanced the McKellar prestige by inviting him to attend Cabinet meetings; the Senator from Tennessee could ill afford a last-ditch patronage row at the very start of the Truman Administration...
...appointing Lilienthal the President had risked a test in Congress, but it looked as though McKellar would have to be content. Politician McKellar was in the hands of a man who knew the business...