A Man And An Act That Changed Our Lives

WAITSBURG - She worked all day every day.

Chop the wood, haul it into the woodshed, split the rounds into useable chunks, haul it into the house, feed the stove for cooking or warmth, clean out the ashes, pump water from the well, haul it into the house, heat the water in buckets for washing or bathing, make candles or buy them, buy kerosene and lamp wicks if available, fill the lamps, trim the wicks, store the milk, cream, potatoes or apples in the cellar, smoke the meat, salt the pork, dry the fruit or can it, thimble and needle, washboard and clothesline, carpet beater and heavy iron, there was much

The BURG

to do just to keep a household running.

The time of the "woman of the house" in the years before electricity arrived on the farm was continuously occupied with physical work every day, all day.

In the fall of 1882, 129 years ago this year, a young man by the name of George W. Norris arrived late in the evening at the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company train depot in Bolles Junction, Wash., (just outside Waitsburg) with the intention of accepting the open position of schoolmaster for the hamlet of which there were some 7 or 8 students.

The plan was to teach school while working on where to locate a new law practice. After only one school term and an unfortunate incident at a brewery in Dayton, some ten miles to the east of Bolles, George decided the Northwest Territory was a bit too raw to need a lawyer just yet and returned to Nebraska.

Fast forward 55 years or sohellip;

In the spring of 1938, on a farm among the steep, rolling hills near Colfax, eight-yearold Winston Mader watched as wires were installed in his home in expectation of the arrival of the new established REA electrical service, which was getting nearer and nearer, pole by pole, every day.

There was a great sense of anticipation and the dinner table talk was often about the changes coming. When the great day finally came, a yard light was installed to illuminate the area between the house and outbuildings.

Winston soon discovered that there was a switch at the base of the light pole. One night after supper, the kitchen screen door slapped shut behind him as the boy stepped outside into the cool darkness amidst the chirping of crickets. He walked up to the yard light pole and pushed the switch handle, and voila! The whole yard was lit up, clear over to the barn!

Winston was thrilled with the fantastic power of that switch. Here in his eightyear old hand was the power to light up or darken his whole environment! On-Off. On-Offhellip;until his mother called him in. He has never forgotten that moment, when the power to light the world came into his hands.

In the foothills of the Blue Mountains, near the town of Waitsburg, the Hansen family first became connected to a rural electric grid created through the REA. At first, the amount of power available to the farm was a bit limited.

An early memory for Jim Hanson, lifetime local farmer, is that there was a constant "power struggle" between the women in the house, who wanted the power for household tasks, and the men in the shop, who needed the "juice" for shop tools and lighting used in repairing and maintaining farm equipment; welders, grinders, air compressors, etc.

Jim does admit that it was the women who persuaded their men to bring electric power to the farm. Jim's wife, Geraine, a North Dakota farm girl, remembers only the great relief that REA power brought to her prairie home, speeding household chores and ending the constant need to pump and haul water, as well as the bright new lights that required no fuel or maintenance.

There are many elders among us today who can remember the coming of electric power to the farm. This little bit of history deserves to be told often: that a congressional act successfully created a program that was aimed at providing an essential service to a large number of hardworking rural farm families, and that the ultimate effect of that act was to bring light to millions of American farms.

When the Rural Electrification Act (REA) was pushed through Congress by Nebraska Senator George W. Norris and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the spring of 1936, 75 years ago, it was revolutionary, although it was not obviously so in the beginning.

It was the women of the rural parts of the country who first realized the huge change. Household lights and then toasters, table fans, mixers, waffle irons and ovens. Electric ranges, refrigerators and clothes washers, water heaters and pumps, radios and vacuum cleaners, then, later, television.

Suddenly, the heavy physical drudgery of the farm woman's life began to lift. It changed for the men, too. A cold drink at noon and a hot bath at the end of a hard day's labor became normal. Food was fresher, the house was cooler and Mama was not as worn out at the end of the day.

The standard of living in rural communities was changed forever, and all because of a little government program of loans to local power cooperatives, with financial and administrative supports created out of the progressive thinking of a farm-boy turned school teacher, lawyer and legislator from Nebraska.

The REA was a national program that could change lives and grow a nation. It was modeled after the successful Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), another lifechanger for ordinary country folk in the Southeastern U.S., which was itself the result of years of patient and rugged political work by the same man, George W. Norris.

Senator Norris often treated partisan politics as a waste of time, but the discussion of his 40-year career, during which he often frustrated his (Republican) party leaders, is well beyond this article. It is sufficient now to say that he would be a breath of fresh air in Washington, D.C. today.

The creation of the REA brought such a dramatic change to such a large number of people living in rural America, the effects are still growing. The nation as a whole began to grow in ways not possible without electric power, some obvious and as immediate as an empty stove kindling wood box, some subtle and long-term, like the impact on the household appliance industry, or the way the imagination of children was opened up to a wider world.

Rural citizens began to be aware life could be focused on many pursuits beyond the farm. Rural communities, coming out of the depression, began to grow and prosper more rapidly. Among the generations born to the change, expectations for excellence, for big ideas and success were more readily fostered.

All of this gain might not have occurred, but for the vision and enthusiasm of George W. Norris and a government program called the Rural Electrification Act.

The 150th birthday of Senator George W. Norris, along with the 75th birthday of the REA, was celebrated this summer in McCook, Nebraska, his home town and state. The party was attended by several descendants of Senator Norris, including two Great Grandsons, David Rath of Monroe Louisiana and by myself, Gary Hofer, from Waitsburg.