Old Familiar Memories - Photo 44

Washboard and Tub

In th 1930s many houses had this combination for washing clothes. REA "Rural Electrification Administration" had not yet brought electricity to many rural areas.

Although nearly 90 percent of urban dwellers had electricity by the 1930s, only ten percent of rural dwellers did. Private utility companies, who supplied electric power to most of the nation's consumers, argued that it was too expensive to string electric lines to isolated rural farmsteads. Anyway, they said, most farmers, were too poor to be able to afford electricity.