Randolph Electric Membership Corporation

Although nearly 90 percent of urban dwellers had electricity by the 1930s, only 10 percent of rural dwellers did. Private utility companies, who supplied electric power to most of the nations consumers, argued that it was too expensive to string electric lines to isolated rural farmsteads. They argued that most farmers were too poor to be able to afford electricity anyway. The Roosevelt Administration believed that if private enterprise could not supply electric power to the people, then it was the duty of the government to do so. So, in 1935 the Rural Electric Administration (REA) was created to bring electricity to rural areas like those in central North Carolina. In 1938, nine men gathered at a small gas station in downtown Asheboro to talk about building an electric cooperative themselves. They, too, believed that people in rural areas deserved the quality of life that electricity provided people in cities. As their talks continued, the men decided to form a cooperative that ...