When I opened my Sunday Jeffersonian on April 3, my eyes were drawn to the report of the annual meeting of the Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative. As I am a resident of the big city of New Concord, I am not a member of the Cooperative, and was not in attendance at the meeting. But reading about the event, which drew "more than 2,200 members and friends" gave me goose-bumps, as I reflected on the fact that this ritual of democracy has persisted for 72 years.
"The meeting was called to order by Duane Parks, chairman of the board of directors," the article reports. "At 1 p.m. Adamsville Cub Scout Pack 122 presented the colors. Sara Schmitz, treasurer of the Ohio Future Farmers of America, gave the invocation." And then the members of the Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative got down to business.
Electric cooperatives like Guernsey-Muskingum were created in the New Deal era to address a pressing national problem: urban America had long since electrified, but the American countryside remained dark. And private electric companies had little interest in extending power lines into the country, as there seemed to be little promise of short-term profits for such a costly investment.
In this region of Ohio, only about 10 percent of rural residents had electricity in 1935. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 was designed at the federal level as a government solution to addressing this problem, and it is arguably one of the most successful government programs ever launched. The Act provided low-cost loans to member-owned rural electrical cooperatives and also employed armies of electricians who travelled the countryside wiring homes and businesses.
By 1939, about half of the rural residents of Southeastern Ohio had been connected to the grid. And more importantly, the electricity that lit their farmhouses was delivered by a cooperative which they owned and managed.
And for the last 72 years, farmers and rural residents of Guernsey and Muskingum counties, and seven additional counties in the region, gather to elect officers who will oversee the management of their electrical cooperative.
I shared this news story with my friend Kevin, a professor of history at the University of Vermont, and he agreed that rural electric cooperatives are one of the great success stories in the history of American governance, comparing them to an even more ancient institution in his home state, the New England town meeting.
When I asked him what he thought the key elements of these models of good government were, he suggested four: organizations that exist on a human scale; local management that is part of and cares about the community; citizen participation; and a belief by the people that the benefits of the organization are real, and that something is at stake in its management. These factors seem to me to get to the heart of it, and all are present in the Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative.
Our current national crisis appears to be as much a crisis in faith about the possibility of good government as it is an economic crisis.
We can all point to examples of government dysfunction and waste. But we should also take note of the examples of good government that surround us.
Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided as to what is the best remedy for our current troubles.
The leadership of both parties is guilty of permitting inflexible ideologies to guide their actions. Since Ronald Reagan's rise to the presidency in the 1980s, much of the Republican party has been chanting the mantra that "government is the problem, not the solution," even when there is evidence in the persistence of America's rural electrical cooperatives and in the New England town meeting, that this is not always the case.
Democrats, for their part, are too inclined to assume that there is a federal solution for every problem we face, and to discount the importance of scale in creating good government.
That government can be part of the solution and that partisanship and rigid ideological perspectives can be overcome in government should be obvious to anyone who is active in small town government and civic organizations. As a Democrat in a region that leans strongly Republican, I find that I have an extraordinary amount of common ground with my Republican neighbors on what our community needs, and I stand in awe of the cooperative spirit, commitment and effectiveness of New Concord's Village Council.
My friend Kevin, a Republican in a small Vermont town that leans heavily Democratic, shares this experience with me. Lest we conclude that the solution to all of our national problems lies in local, rather than national institutions, it is useful to recall the example of rural electrification, which could not have been achieved without the resources of the federal government.
As we all work together to address the local, regional and national challenges that face us, I would urge every citizen to get involved, work cooperatively, and consider the models of government, both good and bad, that exist all around us, to find common ground with their neighbors, and to work toward common solutions.
William Kerrigan is an associate professor in the Department of History at Muskingum College, New Concord.
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