TVA; Wikimedia Commons
In the 1930s, nearly 90 percent of urban dwellers in the USA had electricity, compared with only 10 percent of rural dwellers.
Although private utility companies, maintained that it was too expensive to string electric lines to isolated rural farmsteads, in 1933, with strong pressure from President Roosevelt, Congress created the controversial Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
The TVA was a federal corporation providing navigation, flood control, fertilizer and electricity in parts of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia that had been severely affected by the Great Depression.