Difference between revisions of "325--2011--Week 6 Questions/Comments"
From McClurken Wiki
| Line 5: | Line 5: | ||
This reading also brings up the interesting discussion of the affect of electricity in rural america. As it would be expected, it took much longer for the electric lines and technologies to reach rural america. I believe it has less to do with an unwilling culture and more to do with the lack of private corporations that saw the spread out Midwest and South as feasible markets. | This reading also brings up the interesting discussion of the affect of electricity in rural america. As it would be expected, it took much longer for the electric lines and technologies to reach rural america. I believe it has less to do with an unwilling culture and more to do with the lack of private corporations that saw the spread out Midwest and South as feasible markets. | ||
~~Kyle Allwine | ~~Kyle Allwine | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | An important element of the introduction of electricity that I think we need to talk about is the greatly increased safety of them. Because gas lights were not as bright and tended to flicker, crime was rampant in the streets, even if those streets were lit. With the introduction of the electrically lit streets, the streets were more consistently and evenly lit, so even if the streets were not necessarily safer, at least the perceived safety has increased. | ||
| + | |||
| + | An interesting point that Nye brought up in his analysis of rural electrification is the question of what will this do to the farmer. Now that many of the jobs that used to take him and his hired hands hours or days to do can be shortened to a few minutes work, will farming as a profession become obsolete? These fears were certainly justified in those times, but I think the point that softens the blow of this is that farmers’ productivity was merely increased, and greatly. The time it took to do one job, and the number of hands required to do so decreased. The introduction of electricity to the farm may have made the farmers’ job a little easier, and we have certainly seen over the years that a small unit of farmers can have an even higher productivity. However, I think it might be worthwhile to examine the numbers of how many people were farmers at that time compared to what it was 20 or 30 years after rural electrification, or even today. Perhaps those jobs have been lost, but there was a shift in how the country, and world, gets its food, so the cultural and economic dynamic had to change.--Sara Krechel | ||
