Bringing the Wonder of Electricity to Texas’ Farms (August 12, 2025)
by Scott Sosebee
As some of you know—and many, I suppose, are learning—I come from a long line of “story-tellers.” I grew up hearing stories about my grandparents, their parents, and their parents before them from all members of my family. If I would admit it, hearing and getting the opportunity to retell those stories are probably why I became a historian. One story of my youth that may be my favorite is how my Dad, his brother and sisters, along with their parents “watched” electricity come to them. My Dad’s family lived on a very small farmhouse on the West Texas plains outside Abilene near the small farm community of Noodle. One of the great hardships of their lives in the late 1940s was that they had no electricity and had to rely on kerosene lamps and candles for light, and with no power Grandma Sosebee could not have any modern appliances. One day, they “saw” electricity coming in the form of workers placing poles and lines down their farm-to-market road. Then came the glorious day when the workers came to wire their little farmhouse. When they were done they had switches, plugs, and all the wonders that electrification can bring. However, they decided to wait until my Grandfather got home before they turned on any lights or used their new modern miracle. When he returned from work it was dusk, which made the little ceremony more poignant. My grandfather stepped in, put his hand on the switch, turned it, and—nothing happened! Seems these poor country folks did not realize that you had to put lightbulbs in the sockets to make light. It was another night with the lamps before they could go into Merkel to purchase bulbs the next day.
The Sosebees of Jones County were not unlike many rural Texans in the early to mid-twentieth century. While the wonder of electricity had begun to make its way to Texas’ cities in the late 1800s, and almost all even small towns were electrified by the 1920s, those who lived in the country were stuck in a non-electric world, which meant they were trapped in an almost pre-modern society. Without electricity farming remained almost subsistent, and the residents were locked into a life of privation. As long as the electrification process remained in the hands of the large power companies the rural countryside remained without electricity since the profit motive meant that the large capitalization required to electrify the vast countryside kept those companies from undertaking the task. It looked as if Texas’ farmers would have to wait many years before they could turn on an electric light.
The Great Depression would become a catalyst for change. When American voters elected Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, and in the subsequent years enthusiastically approved of his New Deal program, most would have told anyone that they supported the president’s programs because he had promised to help end the Depression. The New Deal had certainly made that promise, although the economic downturn of that era would prove to be somewhat stubbornly resistant to remedies, but FDR also had greater aspirations. The most significant factor in American society that resulted in the Great Depression was the great inequality in wealth in the U.S. Because so much of the nation’s fortune was concentrated within the top tiers of the financial echelon of the country, there was no large, viable middle class to spread the power of the market to all of society. Put another way, there was only so much that rich people could buy. One of the biggest obstacles to creating that broad middle class was the state of the nation’s rural areas, particularly those in the South and Appalachia. And one of the biggest hindrances to making those regions more prosperous was the lack of access to electricity. Such was the motivation behind the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that saw mixed results. More successful was the next venture—the Rural Electrification Administration (REA).
When Congress passed the Emergency Relief Act of 1935, it gave FDR the authority he needed to establish the REA. In its initial forms it was similar to the Works Projects Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC); the REA employed unskilled workers, many of whom lived in camps, to place poles, string lines, and wire houses, which were the most capital intensive parts of electrification. It did not take long to discover that such a project would take much too long and leave still leave most of the rural areas of the nation without electricity. Thus, the REA changed to a lending agency with the passage of the Norris-Rayburn Bill in 1936.
Under Norris-Rayburn, the REA would make long-term, self-liquidating loans to local governments, non-profit organizations, and in the most utilized form, farmer’s cooperatives. The loans would be used to pay for the capital-intensive process of providing for a means of distributing electricity. The formation of coops also allowed entities to issue bonds for construction. The loans and bonds were then retired though member’s payments for electrical delivery. Before the establishment of the REA, only about two percent of Texas’ farms had access to electricity; by 1965 only two percent remained without. Historians and political commentators, as well as business leaders, are almost in complete agreement that without the presence of and the federal authorization of the REA, any reversal in those statistics would have taken much longer, and the American economy—and farm output—would not have approached the levels it did in the 1950s and 1960s. So, I suppose you truly could “see” electricity coming.
Is that relevant today? I certainly think so. One of the most prevalent factors in inequality between rural and urban areas today is the lack of internet access for rural areas. The availability of connectivity in a rural area is generally supplied by providers who charge a high cost. They do so for the very reason that electricity providers remained out of the rural areas in the 1920s and 1930s—capital cost and thus lack of a profit. What we need is another initiative like the REA that can provide subsidy for rural connectivity. Will it happen? Both parties have promised it, but both have failed to deliver. I am not optimistic that either will in the near future.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.