Power Up!

North Carolina’s Cooperative Extension Service at 100—Part 2
By Carole Howell

Farmer’s Boys and Girls Clubs, designed to train the next generation of farmers and homemakers, evolved into today’s 4-H Club. Today’s clubs touch the lives of 237,000 of N.C.’s young people both rural and urban. (N.C. State University)
A 4-H member in the 1960s fixes a coffee percolator as part of an electricity demonstration. (N.C. State University)
A 4-H club member hoeing in her field on the Tew family farm. (N.C. State University)
African-American home demonstration agent demonstrating child care skills to African-American girls. (N.C. State University)
A boll weevil control demonstration field in Lenoir County. (N.C. State University)
Home demonstration agents combated hunger during both World Wars and the Great Depression by teaching home food preservation. (N.C. State University)
Farm wives used what they learned to earn additional farm income by selling their canned products at curb markets created through Cooperative Extension. (N.C. State University)
Carl and Richard Lutz, North Carolina poultry club members, and two of their Rhode Island Red birds, Sept. 13, 1923. (N.C. State University)
Early 4-H Corn Club members Absenia Johnson and Aron Johnson, of the Dawson 4-H Club in Scotland Neck examine their corn. The two brothers produced 80 bushels of corn on one acre. R.E. Jones took this photo Nov. 8, 1939. (N.C. State University)
By 1936, every North Carolina county had the services of a farm Extension agent, who carried the latest research and technology to farmers in the fields. (N.C. State University)
County agent S. A. Ammons inspecting club member Ruth O'Kelly's poultry, Transylvania County, Sept. 9, 1925. (N.C. State University)
The Watha Women's Club in Pender County was one of the first of the Extension & Community Association clubs that Cooperative Extension now offers statewide. This photo was taken between 1925 and 1930. (N.C. State University)
County agent R.W. Graham watches as Extension editor Frank H. Jeter (right) explains to an Extension club member how to control boll-rot on cotton. (N.C. State University)
Cooperative Extension hired its first farm forestry specialist in 1917. Farmers applied demonstration research to control insects and diseases, as well as logging and marketing timber. (N.C. State University)
Extension made wide use of radio nationally to carry messages to farm and urban families alike.
Shelton Morgan, Boys Club member, and county agent discussing permanent pasture demonstration, Elizabeth City, N.C., May 19, 1924. (N.C. State University)
Shucking corn to sell at curb markets. Extension set up these markets, forerunners of farmers markets, that proved during the Great Depression to be a lifeline for many homemakers and their families. (N.C. State University)
Extension agents took the latest in research into the field. The result was a sharp boost in profitable crops with higher yield on less land. (N.C. State University)
This feed mixer was economically constructed with plans provided to farmers by the U.S. Rural Electrification Administration. (LEARN NC, UNC School of Education)

Click on the photo to view slideshow.

While most of us take our lights and appliances for granted, our grandparents remember kerosene lamps, wood-burning cookstoves and pumping water from the well morning and evening.

"The bathroom was about 50 yards from the house because you didn't want it real close," recalls Shirley Collier in her 1985 interview for the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina. "We had no running water, but had a hand pump outside the kitchen. And we carried everything from the pump to the kitchen, to the barns, whatever we used water for we had to carry it."

Collier says that her family used only wood for cooking and heat. "Our only means of heating was the fireplace in the kitchen and in the living room and a back bedroom," she said. "We had oil lamps and you had to wash the shades every day."

Electrical service came to Collier's family farm near Fayetteville in 1945, but the first significant spark for rural electrification was in April, 1935, with the establishment of the North Carolina Rural Electrification Authority (NCREA). It cleared the way for carrying electricity into the state's rural areas.

In 1935, only a little more than three percent of North Carolina farms enjoyed the advantages of electricity. Some areas rejected the change, and farmers went out by night and filled in the postholes dug the day before. In the early years, some even referred to the member-owned electric cooperatives as communist organizations. Other farmers, excited about the prospect of electricity, began meeting at night to apply to the REA for the federally appropriated funds to build lines, and worked to help clear the right-of-way and pull power lines by mule.

Rural electrification, deservedly, has been cited as one of the most significant turning points for modernizing North Carolina's farms. Cooperative Extension, with its dedication to farmers and their families, helped flip the switch.

An early Extension director, David S. Weaver was an agricultural engineering professor at N.C. State who helped farm communities form electric cooperatives. (N.C. State University)

The REA brought the juice, Cooperative Extension brought the proof

Electrification advocates knew that the agricultural community would be critical to their success. The federal Rural Electrification Administration was creating fact sheets and posters about the promises of electricity, but getting the message out to farmers was another task altogether. The REA called on county Extension offices nationwide to help spread the word about how electric machines and appliances could reduce labor, cut costs and increase productivity on the farm. County agents set up demonstrations of electric feed grinders, brooders and milk coolers, and slowly farmers began to power up.

"There are no reasons why eventually practically every farm and rural community in North Carolina should not have electric power with all its conveniences," wrote David S. Weaver, professor and first head of the Department of Agricultural Engineering at State College (NCSU), in 1945. Weaver went on to become director of North Carolina's Agricultural Extension Service, where he was committed to relieving drudgery on the farm. A large part of his career included pioneering rural electrification.

Franklin Roosevelt's REA was set up to make loans to build electricity distribution systems, and cooperatively owned enterprises were given priority. The Cooperative Extension Service in North Carolina, created in part to take the latest agriculture research and technology to farmers, worked to organize cooperatives and to show farmers and families how to make the best use of this new resource. County agents taught farmers how to install lights in their hen houses to increase egg production.

"I think one of the most interesting things that happened in the early days of these programs are the meetings that were held in each county, most oft'times in the county seat, by REA and home economists and others on the use of electric service in the home; how to cook with it, how to cool with it, how to light with it," said Gwyn Brantley Price, Ashe County school principal and dairy farmer. Price forwarded the push for rural electrification in North Carolina and became the head of the North Carolina REA in 1941.

For some rural families, electric water pumps meant the first indoor bathrooms. Just imagine the wonder of having lights after dark, hot water and all the conveniences and work-saving appliances that came soon after the switch was finally flipped. By 1950, most rural homes had power thanks to rural electrification, but it took until 1974 to reach 97 percent of them.

"It's a damn lie."

Gwyn Brantley Price, Ashe County school principal and dairy farmer, became chairman of the North Carolina Rural Electrification Authority in 1941, when only a fourth of the state's farms had electricity. In an interview for the Southern Oral History Program, he recounted a humorous story from the early days of rural electrification:

One day when I was in the county agent's office signing some papers as chairman of the old Triple A committee, a couple of men came in from Lenoir to see the county agent, a Mr. Messick, and Mr. Max Wilson, attorney for Caldwell Mutual. [Caldwell Mutual would later become Blue Ridge EMC.] Mr. Messick introduced himself and he said, "Mr. Price, if you want electricity, all you got to do is say so. We got it in Caldwell County and we're gonna get it in Watauga County."

It was 1937. Mr. Messick had an uncle he called Uncle Finley. He would go out to the fillin' station and sit in a chair when the weather was good and watch the people go and come.

One day he saw the engineers staking the line across the field, and Uncle Finley asked, "What'cha doing out there?" "We're digging holes for poles for an electric line," explained Mr. Messick, to which Finley replied, "Never be. The farmers'll have to go back and fill the holes up, and they'll have to cut the poles down and use them for stovewood."

Mr. Messick came by one day after the lines were strung, and he said, "Now, Uncle Finley, you see that little bulb right in front of the fillin' station? Well, exactly at 11 o'clock, they're gonna turn a switch and that little bulb's gonna turn white," to which Uncle Finley replied, "It'll never do it." When the time came, all Uncle Finley could say was, "It's a damn lie. It's a damn lie."