Cities of Light

NOT MERELY OUR DUTY--BUT IN OUR INTEREST

At the beginning of the 20th century, leading reformers and politicians in the U.S. became concerned about the declining state of rural communities. Due to tremendous urban and industrial growth of the period, they feared the loss of the farmer as an ideal and as an economic force. In the South, leaders also wanted to stem the flow of laborers leaving the farm for mills and factories in cities and towns.

In 1908, these concerns led President Theodore Roosevelt to appoint the Country Life Commission to investigate challenges faced by rural families across the U.S. through public hearings and surveys. The Country Life Commission discovered that rural citizens endured isolation, poverty, inadequate education, and back-breaking labor. The Commission's recommendations led to the establishment of the Cooperative Extension Service, formation of farm cooperatives, and better vocational education in rural areas.

The commission's reforms sparked a nationwide movement to improve conditions of rural life. Reformers viewed technology as a key ingredient to improve conditions for rural families. Specifically, they believed providing electricity would ease the burden of farm work. Most rural areas did not have electrical service because utility companies believed they would not profit from running lines to large, sparsely settled areas. In 1923, the National Electric Light Association began a cooperative program that included state agricultural colleges, corporations, and the American Farm Bureau Federation. The Committee on the Relation of Electricity to Agriculture's (CREA) aimed to determine whether rural electrification could sustain profit for electric companies. The committee experimented on twenty rural farms, but utility companies soon found the farms did not use enough electricity to justify the costs of electrical lines.

The Country Life Movement and CREA may not have achieved their goal of returning the rural farmer to prosperity and progress, but their ideas laid the foundation for many of the New Deal programs created to address the national economic crisis of the Great Depression.