As part of a bold platform, President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” called for new federal programs to get the depressed economy moving and to ensure fairness. One of those emergency programs created first by executive order was the REA in May 1935. A year later, through bipartisan support in Congress, the Rural Electrification Act made the REA a permanent lending agency.

Electric cooperatives quickly seized on meeting their consumers’ needs as they arose. When rural consumers needed education on using the manifold benefits of this amazing “wired hand” they were receiving, cooperatives hired “member services” personnel who would visit with consumers to help educate and inform. The REA, itself, created a traveling “circus” — officially the “Demonstration Farm Equipment Tour” — that rolled through small towns across the Midwest to demonstrate new appliances and farm equipment and the benefits of electricity to large crowds at each stop. Cooperatives also began teaching electrical safety.

In the 1970s, when electric supply began to tighten and environmentalism came to the forefront of political and cultural thought, cooperatives turned to educating consumers even more about energy efficiency — how to use electricity more wisely. It seemed to be the antithesis of what electric utilities were all about, but it set cooperatives apart. They encouraged and helped consumers to use less of the product they were selling because the foundation of the cooperatives is to help their members live better lives. Not wasting energy — and money — fell into that category.

The job of bringing electricity to all who wanted it in rural America was a success. But there were needs still being unmet in rural areas. Using the same argument of the 1930s, meager return kept many competitors out of the rural market, or those it entered would charge unaffordable prices for services.