The New Deal by Patel Kiran Klaus;

Author:Patel, Kiran Klaus; [Patel, Kiran Klaus;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691149127
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

BROADENING SECURITY

Power to the People

While many parts of the 1935 New Deal legislation only affected small pockets of society, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) had a far-reaching impact across the whole United States. In the mid-1930s, only one in ten American farms had electricity, sharpening the divide between the “enlightened” cities with their modern life and the “dark” countryside. Beyond light and lifestyle, the lack of electricity put clear limits on the mechanization and modernization of farms as well as the economic development of “backward” rural areas. That said, the situation varied greatly across the country. While California had already achieved no less than 63 percent rural electrification before the REA began its work, the situation in the Midwest and South was quite different. In Georgia, for instance, the figure stood at a meager 3 percent. The New Deal changed all that, in this way helping to reduce existing imbalances. By 1941, four out of ten American farms had electricity, and another nine years later, nine out of ten. The New Deal state yet again demonstrated its intention to change America forever.137

The New Dealers did not mount the power poles themselves, however. Action was primarily indirect, through long-term, self-liquidating loans to state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and particularly to farmers’ cooperatives. Unlike the RA, the REA did not give out loans to individuals. Based on the assumption that rural electrification was a public responsibility, the agency focused on the state’s role as facilitator. The main reason for insufficient rural electrification in the 1930s was that pride of place had been given to private actors: for investor-owned power utilities, it was profitable to connect consumers to the grid in densely populated areas, but not in remote parts of the nation. Thanks to its attractive lending terms and other mechanisms, the REA helped to plug in “dirt farmers” where market mechanisms did not work in consumers’ favor.138

Like so many other New Deal initiatives, rural electrification built on long-standing national and transnational discussions—in this case, going back more than twenty-five years. In fact, it drew on “long-range planning and creative thinking on the part of public and private agencies,” as one REA representative correctly observed.139 Below the federal level, some states had been pioneers on this issue: what Wisconsin represented for social security, Pennsylvania was for rural electrification. Already prior to World War I, the Keystone State had become a hotbed of debate, and when progressive veteran Gifford Pinchot became governor in 1923, the movement acquired a strong advocate in the cockpit of power. Despite such a regional anchor, and as with so many other issues, discussions were full of transnational references. A 1925 article by Philadelphia lawyer Harold Evans, “The World’s Experience with Rural Electrification,” stressed how much America was lagging behind on “electric farming,” especially in comparison to European countries, but also New Zealand and the Canadian province of Ontario. The degree of consensus during the 1920s is revealed by the fact that Evans’s text came out in a special issue of the prestigious Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

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