The Power of Marketing brought Power to the Farm

Lester Beall

Power on the Farm, Rural Electrification Administration, 1941

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/5020

Electricity had completely transformed the day-to-day lives of city dwellers by the 1930’s. According to Kitchens and Fishback (2015), while more than 90% of every major city in the United States had electricity in 1930, only 10% of farms were electrified. In 1935, an executive order by Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration. This gave utility cooperatives access to loans from the government to create an infrastructure that would introduce electricity to the rural population. While electricity was proven to improve the quality of life, many of the rural farmers didn’t understand the value of electricity at first. The rural population was often illiterate and didn’t have access to current news. This is where an important marketing strategy would come into play.

Lester Beall was a successful graphic designer who was approached in 1935 to get the word out to rural Americans that electricity would change their lives. (Pompeson 2012). His use of color, red, white, and blue, spoke to a sense of patriotism. His bold pictures with very little verbiage was meant to get a message to people whether or not they could read. In the picture I have included here, a farmer is shown working on a complex electrically powered machine. It would appeal to a farmer because it shows a task that would normally be very manually intensive, sharpening a knife, can be done much more simply with the help of electricity. The man in the picture looks relatable, but also sophisticated. The only words on the poster say, “Power on the Farm,” thus it could be understood by those who had marginal reading skills. This example is eye-catching and worked. Beall was contracted to make three sets of posters in total to advertise the Rural Electrification Administration. (Golec 2013).

These bold and compelling posters were used at county and state fairs, and while the message spoke to illiterate farmers, they also attracted the attention of a more elite crowd of government officials and experts. And they worked: within 15 years, more than 90% of rural farms had electricity. (Kirtchens & Fishback 2015). The power of marketing worked to bring light to rural communities across the United States.

               

References

Golec, M. J. (2013). Poster power: rural electrification, visualization, and legibility in the United States. History & Technology, 29(4), 399-410. doi:10.1080/07341512.2013.876249

Kitchens, C., & Fishback, P. (2015). Flip the Switch: The Impact of the Rural Electrification Administration 1935–1940. The Journal of Economic History, 75(4), 1161-1195. doi:10.1017/S0022050715001540

Pompeson, P. (2012). Lester Beall and the Rural Electrification Administration. Inside Out: A MoMA/MoMa PS1 Blog. Retrieved from https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/03/22/lester-beall-and-the-rural-electrification-administration/

Rural Electrification Administration

"More Power to the Farmer" brochure, Rural Electrification Administration, United States Department of Agriculture, around 1940. Louisan E. Mamer Rural Electrification Administration Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

As people began inventing systems to harness electrical power, lives were transformed. Though electricity posed its own hazards, it was a much safer source of power than candles, fire and gas. In addition to bringing safe and convenient lighting into homes, electricity transformed the modern-day farm in a number of different ways. For the first time, farmers could see their animals and crops at night without the ever-present danger of fire. (Rovang, 2015). Prior to electrical appliances, women on the farm went from spending dawn until dusk doing housekeeping tasks like washing clothes by hand, and cooking over a wood stove, to having more time to work alongside men and have more time for hobbies. (Empowering Women, 2015). Bringing electricity to farms also was found to keep people in the farming business.

Unfortunately for farmers in rural settings (which was definitely the setting for most farms), electricity didn’t reach them until long after the folks living in city. According to Wallace (2016), most city houses had electricity by the 1920’s. Conversely, by 1932, only 10% of rural homes had electricity. The main reason for this was the cost of providing electricity to rural houses was so much higher than in the city, due to an increased distance between each house. This made a huge difference to the standard of living for people in rural communities versus people in cities. People who had farmed for generations started to leave the profession for the conveniences of electricity in cities.

Since this was during the time of the Great Depression and World War II, farming was vital to help fill the demand for food. According to the article, “Light on the Farm” in American History Illustrated (1985), Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order for organizations to get low cost loans that could be paid over 30 years to develop utility systems that could provide electricity to reach rural areas. The farmers themselves worked together to create cooperatives and provided the labor needed to introduce electricity to their own farms. (Wallace, 2016). It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually farms were able to incorporate the seemingly miraculous transformation electricity offered.

References

Empowering women. (2015). Illinois Heritage, 18(2), 38-40.

Light on the farm. (1985). American History Illustrated, 20(8), 32.

Rovang, S. (2015). Envisioning the Future of Modern Farming: The Electrified Farm at the  1939 New York World's Fair. Journal Of The Society Of Architectural Historians, 74(2), 201-222. doi:10.1525/jsah.2015.74.2.201

Wallace Jr., H. D. (2016, Feb 12). Power from the people: Rural Electrification brought more than lights. Retrieved from http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/rural-electrification.