Description
Book SynopsisThe untold story of the power industry's efforts to electrify growing numbers of farms in the years before the creation of Depression-era government programs. Even after decades of retelling, the story of rural electrification in the United States remains dramatic and affecting. As textbooks and popular histories inform us, farmers obtained electric service only because a compassionate federal government established the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The agencies' success in raising the standard of living for millions of Americans contrasted with the failure of the greedy big-city utility companies, which showed little interest in the apparently unprofitable nonurban market. Traditional accounts often describe the nation's population as split in two, separated by access to a magical form of energy: just past cities' limits, a bleak, preindustrial class of citizens endured, literally in near darkn
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
Part I. Historical Context of Rural Electrification
1. The Standard Narrative and Its Defects
2. Unattractive Economics in the Rural Electricity Market
3. Business Attitudes toward Farmers in the 1920s
4. The Lure and Lore of Rural Electrification
5. Farmers on Their Own
Part II. Alignment of Rural Stakeholders
6. Utility Interest in Rural Electrification Awakens
7. The Unexpected Public Relations Value of Rural Electrification
8. The Industry Organizes the CREA
9. State Committees Work to Resolve Uncertainties
10. Regulation and the Extension of Lines to Rural Areas
11. Momentum in the Rural Electrification Subsystem
Part III. Growth of Rural Electrification Efforts in the 1930s
12. Government Innovations in the Rural Electrification Subsystem
13. Competition and Private Utilities in the REA Era
Conclusion
Notes
Index
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