Our Common Wealth

16Sidewalks of theInformation Age

My mother’s second husband grew up on a farm in Texas. He was not liberal. He railed about men who spent the winter on unemployment, and he thought criminals had it coming, the worse the better. Yet he also revered Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR).

Partly it was the farm programs that rescued many from the depths, but mainly it was public power. In Texas, as in most of the country, private utilities had bypassed rural areas because they weren’t worth serving, in the utilities’ view at least. Too much cost, not enough profit. Yet the utilities jealously guarded their monopolies and resisted efforts of legislators to serve those in need.

Finally, FDR pushed through the Rural Electrification Act. Cooperatively owned ...