Rural Electrification: Progress and Future Prospects

Abstract

Those of us who have an interest in the progress and well being of our agricultural areas have watched for many years with interest and sympathy the efforts of American farmers to secure electricity upon terms which they could afford. When President Roosevelt, in May of 1935, established the Rural Electrification Administration, he prescribed for it a duty: To initiate, formulate, administer, and supervise a program of approved projects with respect to the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric energy in rural areas. Formulating and initiating such a program was a bold experiment, designed to serve the best interest of the farmers. The creation of a program of rural electrification in 1935 by the Federal Government met such an enthusiastic response from our rural people that a year later in response to a rising demand for electric service in rural areas, the Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 without a record vote in either house. This 1936 Act provided for a ten-year program of rural electrification and sanctioned the borrowing of $50,000,000 from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and appropriations by future Congresses of up to $360,000,000--an authorized total of up to $410,000,000 for the ten-year period. In the spring of 1935 our program was a vision. Today fifty thousand farmers are benefiting from electricity brought to them over rural electric lines built by our borrowers. In the two and onehalf years which have elapsed since the Rural Electrification Administration was created, a trained organization has been built up, its functions have been expanded to meet the needs of a developing program, and its policies have been shaped by the forces which the Administration has encountered.