A Rural Electrification Administration poster catalogued at 1941 shows a photograph of a small boy looking over a weathered door, with "Electricity for him" in orange script and the line "Area coverage... electricity for all when neighbors cooperate." NAID 514157.
What the sheet prints
A black-and-white photograph shows a small boy peering over the top of an old wooden door. The headline is written over him in orange script. The agency's lightning-bolt initials sit beside "The REA way." The smallest line on the sheet is the one that explains how the program meant to work.
RURAL ELECTRIFICATION ADMINISTRATION · U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE
Electricity FOR HIM
THE REA WAY
AREA COVERAGE...ELECTRICITY FOR ALL WHEN NEIGHBORS COOPERATE
[imprint:] U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE [year and number illegible]
Who issued it
The Rural Electrification Administration, part of the Department of Agriculture, is named across the top. The National Archives holds the poster in Record Group 44 as 44-PA-678. The printing year on the imprint is illegible, so the 1941 date is the catalog's. FRAME lists the purpose as winning support and tags plain folks and glittering generalities.
How to read it
The plain-folks device is the boy. He is not a farmer, an engineer, or an official. He is a child at a door, and the poster asks the viewer to want something for him. That is an emotional appeal, and an effective one, because it is hard to argue against a child having light.
The line at the bottom is the more interesting one. "Area coverage" and "when neighbors cooperate" describe electricity arriving because people in a district join together, not because a power line simply appears from Washington. The poster's own account puts the neighbors first and the agency second. A reader can take that at its word: the program depended on local people choosing to sign on together.
What the sheet leaves out is everything a skeptic would ask about: cost, debt, who owns the lines, and what happens to the household that does not join. That is not unusual for a poster, and it is not dishonest. It is a reminder that a poster is the case for a program, not its accounting.
The REA issued another sheet, A Better Home (NAID 513714), that uses a kitchen photograph in the same way. New Deal agency posters of this kind sit beside the housing posters of the same years, such as Slums Breed Crime. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the New Deal's own publicity, from the Blue Eagle to the government films.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Electricity for him: the REA way, catalogued 1941. Rural Electrification Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, NAID 514157 (44-PA-678), retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
