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Show Electricity Reaches the Homestead; Farming Regains Favor With Youth I -v "4. " !t,-c " x ' t- v , i t - ' ": k' it ; t ;l i , - - - z s- X V f ,3 if'" 41 Rural Depopulation Trend Reversed as Agricultural Industries Begin Developing New Cultural and Mechanical Opportunities By JOSEPH W. LaBINE "How ya. gonna keep 'em down on the farm?" We used to have a lot of fun singing that good-humored old ballad in the War days. The question was qualified, of course, by the addition of the words, "after they've seen Paree." The idea was supposed to be that once a lad from the cornfields of Iowa or the plantations of the Old South had had a fling at the world's gayest capital it was no simple sim-ple task to reconcile him once more to a life of hard chores and high boots. Everybody sang it, nobody believed it and it was swell propaganda for raising an ex-'' peditionary army. Today it's not so funny. Keeping 'em down on the farm is a serious problem. Better educational opportunities, opportu-nities, lean times and the broader sophistication for which that same war was largely responsible respon-sible have lured to the city many a young man who would otherwise have proudly aspired to the farming tradition. Land Up, Population Down. In 1925, some 48.6 per cent of the land area of the United States was in farms; in 1930 this ratio had increased to 51.8 per cent, and by 1935 it had jumped to 55.4 per cent During these same years the rural population, which had been 46.1 per cent of the nation's total in 1925, declined to 43.8 per cent in 1930 and to 43.1 per cent in 1935. But in a real democracy the social and economic pendulums do not swing too far out of line before a way is found to bring them back. The last few years have seen a new appreciation of sociological readjustment, re-adjustment, and its effect has been to create new machinery for spreading spread-ing to the farthest reaches of the land the cultural and mechanical benefits which have all too long obtained ob-tained chiefly to the cities. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the concerted drive now under way to extend electricity to the farms. The Rural Electrification administration, admin-istration, organized in 1935, and "feeling its way" for the last two or three years, is getting into full stride with plans to electrify 500,000 American farms between now and June 30. Electrification Booms. During the first six months of this yeer it will have lent or allocated funds to bring the benefits of electricity elec-tricity to a number of farms equal to more than one-third of all the electrified farms there were in this country at the end of 1938. It is safe to predict that, with the farms to be added, independent of EEA aid, to the lines of the utility companies com-panies (whose rural programs REA spurred to record activity) the present pres-ent total will be doubled. Cloaked in these statistics are implications im-plications certainly far vaster than the figures themselves, portents far beyond the power of any allegorical string of electric light bulbs seven times the girth of the globe to illuminate. It takes no more than a little anec dote to illustrate how electricity, coupled with this day of the automobile, automo-bile, the highway and the radio, may well be a starting gun for the long awaited back-to-the-soil decen- I'CN, ""JC rf - 1 ' V sx ? -I This lad may some day be a better poultry-raiser than his dad, homing future hens under un-der an electric hover. tralization which may some day supplant sup-plant the breadline. The anecdote concerns a southeastern farmer who had been persuaded finally to sign up with an REA co-op. Social Significance. "I never would have believed what it has meant," he told the coop co-op superintendent some time after electric power had begun to relieve his family from most of its drudgery. drudg-ery. "My boys who are just entering enter-ing or about ready for high school are making their plans about what they are going to do, on the farm, when they grow up. It used to be they talked about what they were going to do when, they grew up, seeming to have in mind everything else except farming." Nor will the cities be without compensation com-pensation for the benefits extended to the farms. Manufacturers will be materially helped. New figures from the REA statisticians statis-ticians reveal that the total lent or made available by REA in the four years which will end June 30 will be $231,000,000. Of this amount, $150,000,000 is for material orders, Strinsinz four lines of aluminum cable at once near Ilorton, Kan. REA projects hare required 115,000 miles of this cable, j Above: REA and Co-op officials of-ficials rode beside modern power lines in an ox cart symbolising sym-bolising the inconveniences of rural life in a bygone day, as Center, Ala., paraded to celebrate cele-brate its new electric service. from which all industry draws extensive ex-tensive benefits. Twenty-nine million mil-lion dollars will have gone into poles; $6,500,000 into line hardware and cross-arms; $1,500,000 into insulators; insu-lators; $27,000,000 into transformers; transform-ers; $18,000,000 into cut-outs and brackets; $1,500,000 into grounding equipment; $49,000,000 into conductors conduc-tors and $8,000,000 into guy wires, clamps, rods and anchors. Aluminum: A Sample. The effect upon industry is easily seen by making a brief analysis of any one of these items. Take the largest conductors for instance: The United States has consumed some 600,000 miles of aluminum cable, steel reinforced and 115,000 miles of this have been required by REA in four years! New 1939 orders or-ders will help to stabilize employment employ-ment for Arkansas' vast bauxite mines, from which the ore used in REA aluminum cable comes; for aluminum plant workers, for the railroads, for aluminum reduction and fabricating plants and even for the steel industry, which provides cores for the cables. Still further good news for indus-! indus-! try, as well as an indication of the fuller life in store for the half million mil-lion farms to be added to REA lines in the remainder of the fiscal year, is an immediate demand for $90,-) 000,000 worth of appliances which' the program is expected to create. On the face of past records it may be prophesied that 130,000 families will buy refrigerators; 230,000 will buy washing machines; 85,000, water wa-ter pumps; 80,000 vacuum cleaners and 435,000 will buy radios, which is just one more indication, perhaps, that it is the cultural benefits of electricity that appeal to the farmer, farm-er, for only 400,000 will buy electric elec-tric irons. Small Towns Profit. Profit has come, also, to the small urban communities which exist as marketing and recreational centers for surrounding farm areas. As an example, from 1935 through 1938, 600,000 farm homes were electrified electri-fied in the United States, almost all requiring new wiring. Of the $50,-000,000 $50,-000,000 expended for this aspect of the work, half was spent for labor performed locally by small electrical elec-trical contractors who had not had much employment because of lack of local home construction. The other $25,000,000 has gone to distributors distrib-utors and manufacturers of wiring materials. Even with the vast nature of this year's program there will be much left to be done. When REA first began to function, only one farm in nine had electricity; when this year's program is carried out to its fullest extent three farms in five will still be without it. It must not be imagined, either, that REA's path has been entirely rosy. REA makes no grants; it lends money only, and theoretically cannot be counted as one of the "Santa Claus" agencies. Its loans must be self-liquidating or it won't lend. But of all the millions loaned up to March 1, 1939, less than $100,000 in principal and interest had been repaid. Officials were plainly worried wor-ried that revenues and repayments were not up to expectations. Now John M. Carmody, REA administrator, ad-ministrator, hopes a remedy will be found in legislation by the states which will be favorable to REA cooperatives co-operatives experiencing financial difficulties. REA's legislative plan, now in effect in six states, 'vill seek to have lightened the state tax burden bur-den on co-ops, relieve them of control con-trol by state power commissions and exempt their securities from "blue sky" laws. How successful Carmody will be remains to be seen. It seems plausible plaus-ible to expect remonstrances from utility companies whose rural lines are benefactors from no such leniency. Western Newspaper Union. ' |