The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
OCTOBER 14, 1953
NEW YORK, Tuesday—It had been a long while since I had travelled in the United States and really had an opportunity to read newspapers in other cities and to find out what the people of other localities are thinking. The first thing that struck me in the morning paper in Nashville was that, on one side of the front page there was a long article about the address made by the Indian delegate, Mr. Menon, in the United Nations. On the other side of the front page was an article on the attacks made by the Administration on TVA.
I am delighted to find that so many people have spoken to me about the value of TVA to that whole region. I do not think in the United States that we have yet come to realize what the value of TVA is to the world. Travellers from other countries come here for the purpose primarily of seeing TVA. When they show you great new developments in other countries, they always compare these developments with what they have heard about TVA.
They ask you questions and you usually find you are not well enough informed as to what TVA has meant in power development, in the development of phosphates, in flood control, in industrial development and how much it has affected the lives of the population living in the neighborhood.
I think Nashville is particularly fortunate in having a morning newspaper which carries so much foreign news. Some times in areas away from our great metropolitan districts, you find newspapers carrying very little about what goes on in the world today. If you believe in the theory that newspapers meet always the demands of their customers, you must believe that the people of that particular area are not interested in the rest of the world.
I believe, however, that would not always be true, for I am convinced that more and more people are beginning to realize that the United States must know about other parts of the world and must be responsive to the thinking of peoples in other parts of the world.
Our young people are going to work in far greater numbers in countries outside the United States. They are going to be stationed in army bases outside the United States, and they are going to be employed in Government agencies outside the United States. So, for their sake, we must develop greater knowledge about the United Nations and the world, and we must equip them better to do the work which is going to be thrust upon them.
E. R.
(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 14, 1953
Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project
Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.
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