Electric irons were a great improvement on their charcoal-filled counterparts because they were cleaner and didn’t require a lit stove, thereby reducing the heat in homes on hot summer days. Lightbulbs, for example, made dark streets safer and night schools more feasible. The arrival of a co-op within a region produced significant lifestyle and economic changes for its members. Once a potential co-op secured all this information, its founders usually endured an agonizing waiting period as the understaffed REA examined the proposal, secured federal funding for successful proposals, and arranged a power wholesaler for the new co-op. The cost of joining a co-op was usually about $5 a month, though many rural residents could only pay through labor.Ī successful co-op proposal included maps, detailed budgets, and proof that the proposed co-op would only serve customers who lacked access to traditional, private power companies. Members of the co-op paid for all this work. The general manager hired linemen and a project survey manager, for example, while the board retained an attorney and helped to secure easement rights (i.e., permission from landowners to use parts of their land) for electric lines. This group was generally in charge of hiring a general manager, sometimes called a “president/CEO,” who took charge of the practical day-to-day footwork required by the REA to receive federal assistance. After farmers in a particular region had agreed to form a co-op, they elected a board of trustees or directors. Scattered across the state, Georgia’s forty-one co-ops are: Altamaha EMC, Amicalola EMC, Blue Ridge Mountain EMC, Canoochee EMC, Carroll EMC, Central Georgia EMC, Coastal Electric Cooperative, Cobb EMC, Colquitt EMC, Coweta-Fayette EMC, Diverse Power, Excelsior EMC, Flint Energies, Grady EMC, GreyStone Power Corporation, Habersham EMC, Hart EMC, Irwin EMC, Jackson EMC, Jefferson Energy Cooperative, Little Ocmulgee EMC, Middle Georgia EMC, Mitchell EMC, North Georgia EMC, Ocmulgee EMC, Oconee EMC, Okefenokee REMC, Planters EMC, Rayle EMC, Satilla REMC, Sawnee EMC, Slash Pine EMC, Snapping Shoals EMC, Southern Rivers Energy, Sumter EMC, Three Notch EMC, Tri-County EMC, Tri-State EMC, Upson EMC, Walton EMC, and Washington EMC.Īll the state’s co-ops met similar regulatory requirements in their quest to secure funding from the REA. These co-ops have all remained active to the present day, along with eight more created since 1939. Seventy percent of Georgia’s population lived in rural areas during the 1930s, and by 1939 the state’s farmers and rural residents had founded thirty-three co-ops. Georgia especially benefitted from REA-subsidized loans. About 25 percent of rural America was electrified by that time-a 15 percent increase over four years. By 1939 the REA had supported the creation of 417 co-ops across the country. Congress endorsed this order the following year by passing the Rural Electrification Act.) Many of these rural groups organized as co-ops (tax-exempt, nonprofit entities owned by the members they serve), using the REA money to erect and maintain their own power lines. Roosevelt signed an executive order to establish the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which distributed low-cost loans, grants, and structural templates to groups of rural residents, as part of the president’s New Deal program. These new appliances were all but useless to homes without electricity. The electric lightbulb, invented in 1879, transformed the urban landscape, while the 1920s ushered in a variety of electric appliances, including phonographs, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and radios. This difference between the farm and the city created a significant cultural division. It was simply not profitable for companies to string miles and miles of cable to service widely dispersed farms. The main cause of this disparity was the cost of constructing power lines.

In 1935, during the Great Depression, only about 10 percent of rural Americans had access to electricity, in contrast to 90 percent of urban Americans. In 2016 forty-one individual co-ops, all members of the umbrella organization Georgia EMC, provided electricity to 157 of the state’s 159 counties, or approximately 73 percent of Georgia’s land area. Electric cooperatives (co-ops), also known as electric membership corporations (EMCs) or rural electric membership corporations (REMCs), have served Georgia’s rural regions and counties since the mid-1930s.

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