In 1935, FDR issued an executive order to create the Rural Electrification Administration to bring electricity to millions of rural Americans.
The sad fact is that if President Obama were to propose doing something similar today, the issue would become devisive. Politics might stop the process. The Tea Bag people would scream socialism, big government. They would march in the streets calling it “Obamapower” instead of the REA.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 32 President of the United States
It took six years after the REA was launched in 1941 to help 800 rural electric cooperatives to string 350,000 miles of power lines.
Click on the America’s electrical grid and learn more about what it took to build the most extensive electric transmission system in the world. The electrification of America took more than half a century and is still evolving.
The biggest difference between China today and America in the 1950s is the population. America electrified a nation with a population of about 160 million people. China has 1.3 billion—a daunting task. Since China has connected about five hundred million in less time than it took the United States to connect far less, if anyone can do it, the Chinese can.
Discover China Going Green or return to Part 1 of America Electrified
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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