 Since the picture you are about to see was produced, the rural electrification situation has changed greatly. By 1951, around 90% of all U.S. farms had electricity. Cooperatives and other rural electric systems, financed by rural electrification administration loans, were serving more than 3,500,000 farms and other rural consumers. The dust can after. That's the way things are on the farm. Summer and winter go by. It may be dark in the barn, but you've got to milk just the same. It may be hot or cold, but the feed has to go to the cattle. A farmer works at a dozen trays through the day. And so does his wife, and his sons, and his daughters. For Bill Parkinson, the long day's work has begun. Has to help. If you marry a farmer, that's the first thing you learn. Summer and winter go by, but the water has to be pumped and the fire lighted. This is 1940, but the farm woman's day is long. They don't complain to women like Hazel Parkinson, but they know on an August morning how hot the stove is going to be at noon. They may not say much about it, but they wish you could just turn a faucet to get your water the way you can in town. They know, and their children know, the work that goes into raising food for a nation, for the children of a nation. But milk has to be properly cooled or it'll spoil and sour. And that takes a family of seven here on the Parkinson farm. The check from the dairy means sugar and coffee, clothes and shoes, and all the things this earth won't grow. It's good land here, long settled land. Bill Parkinson was born here in 1889, years father bought the farm. Bill's carried it on, improved it, changed the changing conditions. 205 acres. He used to do general farming, but the land got tired. Now Bill and his sons cultivate about 30 acres. He rotates corn and oats, red clover and grass, now falafel. Not the best land, not the worst, but it has raised five healthy Americans and Bill and Hazel. That's something for land to do, not for human beings in August, if you haven't the right sort of pump or equipment. Milk today must pass modern standards, dairy standards. The milk check won't be so big this month. On a farm that's just horse sense. A farm is the oldest cooperative in the world. It stays a farm, but it takes on new skills and new ways. You can't leave your men folks dirty, they might get used to it. Heat the water, carry the water, pour it in the tub, every week just like cleaning the lamps. That's the old way, the hard way. There is a machine to do the wash, but it runs by electricity. There are lamps you don't have to clean and trim and fill, but they run by electricity. Here on the farm where it's needed most, electricity is hard to get. Power companies want a profit. They get it in the city where people are scrunched up together, but the farms are left in the dark. Three farms out of four are left in the dark. 75% of all farms in this big, inventive country seems wrong somehow. Chewing in the barn, we're taking something from the earth and we'll give it back to the earth. And in between it will feed American cattle and American kids. The load's part of us and we're part of the load. Pitcher up and bill your steady, that's a good load. A good load, fight of 70 years ago before electricity was born, from the stove were good tools in their day. Good people, hard-working people, deserve the best tools man can make. Bless this food to this family. They have earned it, not by easy tasks, but with their strength and their toil. They're wise in the ways of the earth. They are a united family. Now they're tired at the end of day, but they're friendly with each other. They're glad to see each other's faces. They may not say very much, but they have the word home in their hearts. The things we cherish most in America are here at this table. While we foster and maintain them, it shall be well with all of us. It is not done, Springfield, and the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln. But the letters and words to tired eyes blur and dance on the page. She doesn't care so much about her own eyes, but her children's wouldn't be so hard if you had a good light on your work. Wouldn't be so hard with power to turn the grindstone. They found that out in the cities, in the factories. But one man can't change that alone. From Mississippi to Isle, Rocks of Maine, we're building it still together. We can get the things that we want today, with neighbors working the same way, working together to cut the corn. The slow, cautious decision of the people. Electricity. About time we got around here. Well, it sure would help me out, and the woman too. But the power company says, you can see their lines go across country, see them in the sky, but they don't bring the power down to the farm. Say it costs too much. Say a lot of things. I sure like to light up the barn and the house too. Running water. Ellen's always saying, if we had running water, power company won't do it. But I hear there's a new kind of power. Government. That's right. I hear there's an agency, rural electrification. Well now, how do you go about it? I ain't for it, but I'm ready to be convinced. I'm for it if it gets us the power. Why don't we get a meeting? A meeting and hear about it, find out about it. Don't have to take it unless we want, but find out about it. Government power for our farms. One night in the district schoolhouse, Bill Parkinson's neighbors get together. They listen and argue and ask questions. They speak their mind. Some are not easy to convince. Thoughts are going to cost. Who's going to run it? Why is the government doing it? Who's going to own the lines? The county agent meets them on their own ground. The REA was set up by the president and the congress in 1935 to help farmers to get the power and light at a price they can afford. The REA loans money at low interest rates for line construction and where necessary for generating plants to the cooperative set up by the farmers in the community. There are no private investors, no profit making. You don't risk any cash yourself except a small membership fee. You get power at cost. When the loan from the government to your cooperative is paid back through your electric bills, you and your neighbors will own your own electric system, your own lines. In 1935, REA is born. 90% of all American farms without lighter power. The cities are lighted. The country is still in the dark. Lights up. 1936. 26 REA systems. 7,500 farm families like Bill Parkinson's get light. 1937. Lights up. There are 122 systems now. Power and light for 43,000 farm families. Lights up for Mississippi and Ohio. Lights up north, south, east, west. 1939. 548 systems. 435,000 families and other users and many more soon to come on the lines. Lights up. 600 systems operating in early 1940 spreading their wires over 45 states. Well over half a million farms, schools, churches, stores and rural industrial plants getting electric service for the first time. 300,000 more expected to come on these lines and new lines going up almost everywhere at the rate of 500 miles a day. They're stretching out long wires reaching out where wires never went before. There's a tune as the wind blows through the wires. They're lifting the pole. Back in revolutionary days in this country, we used to plant a pole and call it Liberty Tree. This pole has been a Liberty Tree to thousands of farm families. Hoist up the transformer. It means kilowatt hours of electricity. One kilowatt hour will do a week's wash. It will grind 100 pounds of grain. One kilowatt hour will hoist two tons of hay. Kilowatt hours don't get tired. It's as clean as that. Looks as if it would bake good too. 1940, southwestern Ohio. Scattered showers and thunderstorms tonight and Friday. Cooler Friday afternoon and night, much cooler in southwest portions of the state. Here's your weather forecast. Electricity means running water on the farm. You can throw the old pump handle away. This pump works all the time for a few cents a day. That may sound queer to the people in the city, but in a cooperative, if you tried to cheat, you'd only be cheating yourself. A book that should have fed the children gone to the pigs. We've got an electric mama now. A turn of the hand means drinking water for the horses. A turn of the hand instead of minutes at the pump. No bending over the scrub board, no rubbing and scrubbing while your arms and fingers ache. If you have ever ironed, an electric iron may not look important to a man, but it lightens one whole day's burden for a woman. How to shell peas. I won't ask for an affidavit on that, but she says it's true. It'll help us out through night and day. We've got new tools for the old toil. We'll learn their ways and set them to work. Set them to work to help us all. Neighbors working together. We hired the money and brought the wires. It's our own power and our own light, and it will belong to all of us, all of us here together. It's a friendly sound when the motor whirs. It's a friendly sight when the lights go on. It's the light and power we've never had, but we've got it now together. Easier now.