Marietta in History
Power to the People
1938
The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was a godsend to rural folks in Georgia during the Depression. While towns and cities had electricity, farms did not – only three percent of them were served by private power companies. Stringing power lines to isolated farms was expensive and didn't produce much revenue.
However, the REA was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and its mission was to bring electric power to rural areas. It provided low-cost loans to the Cobb County Rural Electrification Membership Co-op (Cobb EMC) to run those lines, with the money to be repaid through users' electricity bills.
On December 17, 1938, Senator Richard Russell arrived in Marietta and threw the switch that electrified 600 farms. Marietta's mayor, Rip Blair said that the REA "would bring the people of Marietta and Cobb County closer together."
Mary Ellen Simpson Allgood remembered the day the lights came on as a wonderful time. "It was just a happy day; we could throw our kerosene lamps away." Her boyfriend got her a radio – the first her family ever had - for Christmas that year.
Paul Lovinggood said that "everybody had more time after we got electricity, because we got a washing machine and an iron and a refrigerator." In the bigger picture, the United States would soon be at war and increased farm productivity made possible by electricity would play a vital part in supporting American troops.
Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South.