Difference between revisions of "325--2011--Week 6 Questions/Comments"
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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 | 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 | ||
| + | Nye mentions how technology improved the work of farmers and how productivity increased. Technology also had an effect on the family life of the farmer. Nye claims, “A TVA study showed that electric lights added two to four hours a day to a family’s potential working time, giving them more flexibility in planning the day’s activities . . . . Refrigerators retarded food spoilage and improved the family diet” (323-24). It is important that eventually electricity was not restricted to the cities because its use in rural areas increased productivity on farms. However it also was beneficial in factories. As Dr. McClurken mentioned in class, the use of electricity in factories made it possible for machines to run longer and the factories did not have to be built near rivers. | ||
| + | –Samantha W. | ||
== Building the Electrical System -- What Was Electricity? == | == Building the Electrical System -- What Was Electricity? == | ||
