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.