The New Deal for Electricity in the United States, 1930–1950

The world has long seen the United States as a developed country, but its situation 65 or 70 years ago was not nearly so monolithic. In the mid-1930s, rural areas in the United States lagged significantly behind metropolitan centers in development. U.S. agriculture suffered from a long-term depression. Electrification of rural households was barely 10%, compared with almost 85% of urban households. In these and other ways, the unevenness of U.S development in the early twentieth century resembles that of many of today’s developing countries. One might therefore expect the U.S. experience of rural electrification to contain some lessons for today’s rural electrification programs.