Electricity Dbq

The United States in the early 1930s saw nearly ninety percent of its urban population with access to electricity, which allowed them more efficient uses of machines like electric stoves, coffee makers, waffle irons, hot plates, electric roasters, and Waring Blenders. At that time, it was financially difficult for private companies to supply urban areas with electricity for numerous reasons, primarily because farmers were often too poor, too widespread, and too few to actually produce a real profit from. Still, rural life without electricity was hard. Farmers had to rely on dim kerosene lanterns just to do their work, the absence of electricity in opposition to cities aided in their isolation, and the general standard of living was dangerously

The growing sense of despair and hopelessness resignated as the United States was just beginning to come out of the Great Depression, and many were left homeless and without work. The Roosevelt Administration saw the two issues and had an idea that would still be prominent and controversial for years to come: they believed that it was the government’s responsibility to supply electricity where private investors would not. On May 11, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved an executive order creating the REA, or the Rural Electrification Administration, which would provide loans and similar forms of assistance so that groups of farmers could build their own electrical distribution systems.

This decision was highly criticized as many believed it would unfairly hurt the business of private companies, and several members of congress were opposed to the government’s interference in the economy, fearing it would lead to something close to socialism. Nevertheless, under master mechanical engineer and head of the REA, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, the act went into place as one of the most successful government programs ever enacted, additionally the system created then was a smaller scale version of the system stilled used

He nearly single handedly developed the system that is still used today, and was able to see faults in the system when others did not. A monument celebrating his life and contributions to the development of electrification in rural areas is in order. A statue invoking his image would give appropriate memory to one of the father’s of modern electricity would be interesting if it was stone, but even more fitting as a mechanical, lit statue that uses the electricity he helped share with the world. It could be something simple; perhaps bronze and copper bases under yellow twinkling lights, or even more sophisticated, he could be electrically powered as