Putting "Loafing Streams" to Work: The Building of the Lay, Mitchell, Martin, and Jordan Dams, 1910-1929

Putting "Loafing Streams" to Work: The Building of the Lay, Mitchell, Martin, and Jordan Dams, 1910-1929. By Harvey H. Jackson 111. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997. xi, 230 pp. $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8173-0889-X

What is a loafing stream you ask? Well, if you are in the business of selling electric power, it is any free-flowing waterway that might be dammed in order to generate hydroelectric power. As Thomas Martin, president of the Alabama Power Company, phrased it in 1925: "The continued progress of our state consists in lifting the burdens of drudgery from the shoulders of man to the tireless shoulders of the dynamo. Every loafing stream is loafing at the public expense and every kilowatt of power means less work for someone, more freedom, and a richer chance for life" (p. 152). Noble sentiments indeed, although we should recognize that all of the progress alluded to in Martin's remarks was to filter through the accounting books of an investor-owned utility dedicated as much to private profits as to public good.

In this book Harvey Jackson offers an engaging account of Alabama Power's efforts to build four dams on the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers in central Alabama; the first of these dams (Lay) was completed in 1913, whereas the others (Mitchell, Martin, and Jordan) were built in the period after World War I and before the Great Depression. A history professor at Jacksonville State University, Jackson does not possess an interest in dams or electric power per se. Rather, he came to write this book as an extension of earlier research he undertook on the character of life associated with Alabama rivers (Rivers of History: Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba, and Alabama [Tuscaloosa, 1995]). While working on his previous book he discovered the power company's archives and-after reflecting on the import of material related to dam construction-came to believe that "here was a story that needed to be told" (p. ix).

Apparently, Putting "Loafing Streams" to Work was not officially sponsored by Alabama Power, but Jackson makes clear that he received encouragement from both a senior vice-president and the manager of corporate information and that soon thereafter he "put together a proposal, the company agreed to my plan, and work got underway" (p. ix). Support from the company in making their archives and staff available to the author does not discount the value of Jackson's work. Nonetheless, this book offers a distinctly upbeat account of the company's place in Alabama history, and this reviewer would not be surprised if the utility distributed large numbers of copies to help engender goodwill from the rate-paying public. One of the most commonly cited reference sources is the company newsletter, Powergrams, which, unsurprisingly, always placed corporate affairs in a favorable light.

Jackson is drawn to cultural, as opposed to technical or financial, aspects of hydroelectric power development. He focuses primarily on the social life of the construction camps built to support the thousands of laborers who erected the dams. Situated in previously remote backwater regions, these camps were home for a few years for thousands of workers. Using many photographs from company archives, Jackson does a good job of bringing these camps to life. In particular, issues such as how African Americans contributed to-and were segregated within-various dam construction projects are dealt with in a forthright manner that eschews any effort to gloss over the racist character of early-twentiethcentury Alabama society. Jackson declines to castigate the company for its policies, but he does not shrink from explicating the racial issues involved in assembling, housing, and policing a large and transient workforce in the South's rural hinterlands. In addition, he provides good coverage of health issues; one of the strongest chapters in the book offers an enlightening examination of how the completion of Lay Dam prompted a frenzy of concern that the new reservoir had precipitated an outbreak of mosquito-borne malaria. Jackson also makes good use of company records to describe how managers responded to the potentially devastating legal consequences of malaria-based lawsuits-"mosquito suits" filed against the firm.

In sum, this book does a good job of telling the story Jackson wants to tell. He sticks to his strengths and avoids muddying the story with complexities, such as the struggle between private companies and public power advocates, that are not directly germane to his interests. At the risk of criticizing Jackson for not considering matters that fell outside his intended purview, there is one topic on which he might have reflected to good advantage. In recent years dams have come to be seen by many people as agents of significant ecological change-if not outright destruction. Clearly, the dam building program carried out by Alabama Power wrought tremendous changes on the riparian environment of central Alabama, and Jackson makes some allusions to this transformation. For example, he notes how the closing of the outlets on the Martin Dam completely dried up the Tallapoosa River below the dam, stranding sturgeon weighing up to four hundred pounds. But the notion that a "loafing stream" might be a wonderfully rich and varied ecological habitat and that a significant environmental price might have been paid for electric power production finds little place in this book. Maybe it will in the author's next one.

DONALD C. JACKSON Lafayette College

Copyright University of Alabama Press Jan 2000
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