The Little White House NEWSLETTER 
 
Roosevelt's Little White House - 706-655-5870 - 401 Little White House Rd. - Warm Springs, Ga. 31830 
 
Spring Quarter 2015 
The idea to light up America begins in Warm Springs, Georgia! In the 1930s, only ten percent of America's farm houses had electrical power. Most of the country lived by candlelight. 
 
"Because there was no electricity, a farmer could not use an electric pump. He was forced not only to milk but to water his cows by hand, a chore that, in dry weather, meant hauling up endless buckets from a deep well. Because he could not use an electric auger, he had to feed his livestock by hand, pitch forking heavy loads of hay up into the loft of his barn and then stomping on it to soften it enough so the cows could eat it. He had to prepare the feed by hand: because he could not use an electric grinder, he would get the corn kernels for his mules and horse by sticking ears of corn  hundreds of ears of corn, one by one into a corn sheller and cranking it for hours." (The Next Greatest Thing, The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 1984) 
 
Because there was no electricity in the little farm house, oil lamps shed light at night for farm homes in America. 
Because there was no electricity in the little farm house, three oil lamps shed light at night for Mary and her family. 
 
Outside the temp might be ninety or ninety-five or one hundred, and inside the kitchen would be considerably higher, and because there was no electricity, there was no fan to so much as stir the air. 
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Washing, ironing, cooking, canning, shearing, helping with the plowing and the picking and the sowing, and, every day, carrying the water and the wood, all because there was no electricity. 
 
 President Roosevelt saw most of Georgia and most of the United States living in the 19th century and he decided to do something about. In 1935, he created the Rural Electrification Administration. This system of Coops still serve Georgia and the nation in the form of Electrical Membership Coops or EMC's. 
"Yes, electricity is a modern necessity of life not a luxury. That necessity ought 
to be found in every village, in every home and on every farm in every part of 
the wide United States. The dedication of this Rural Electrification 
Administration project in Georgia today is a symbol of the progress we are 
making--and, my friends, we are not going to stop." Franklin D. Roosevelt 
 
FDR dedicating the REA at Barnesville, Ga. August 11, 1938 "Fourteen years ago a democratic Yankee, a comparatively young man, came to a neighboring county in the State of Georgia, in search of a pool of warm water wherein he might swim his way back to health; and he found it. The place--Warm Springs-was at that time a rather dilapidated small summer resort. His new neighbors there extended to him the hand of genuine hospitality, welcomed him to their firesides and made him feel so much at home that he built himself a house, bought himself a farm, and has been coming back ever since. And he proposes to keep to that good custom. I intend coming back very often. 
 
Maps showing coverage of Georgia's EMC's (above) and the United States (below) show just how much electrical power was created by Roosevelt's REA. Without his Georgia experiences, we would not be as advanced today and many American's would still be without power. 
 
There was only one discordant note in that first stay of mine at Warm Springs. When the first of the month bill came in for electric light for my little cottage, I found that the charge was eighteen cents per kilowatt hour--about four times as much as I was paying in another community, Hyde Park, New York. That light bill started my long study of proper public utility charges for electric current, started in my mind the whole subject of getting electricity into farm homes throughout the United States. 
 
So, my friends, it can be said with a good deal of truth that a little cottage at Warm Springs, Georgia, was the birthplace of the Rural Electrification Administration." 
 
For more information about Roosevelt's Little White House, scheduling tours and hours of operation, please visit our website: www.GeorgiaStateParks.org or like us at www.Facebook.com/littlewhitehouse 
 
2 Roosevelt's Little White House - 706-655-5870 - 401 Little White House Rd. - Warm Springs, Ga. 31830