Power to the People

Imagine vast swaths of the countryside plunged into darkness. Not due to cataclysmic storms. Not at the hands of cybercriminals. Just because of nightfall. Imagine near-total darkness enveloping much of the nation’s landmass, simply because the sun sets.

That would be our reality to this day if not for a massive government intervention nearly a century ago. As recently as the early 1930s, the vast majority of homes in rural America had no electric lighting. Families used kerosene lanterns in their houses and outbuildings. That began to change when President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration by executive order in 1935. Congress soon jumped on the bandwagon, passing the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

Without this collective action of the American people, executed by their national government, many of the most remote parts of our country would still be in the dark. Electric utilities never would have taken it upon themselves to go to the enormous ex…