ohio farm bureau

Murray Lincoln addresses an assembly gathered to hear about electrification, as Eleanor Roosevelt (left) listens intently.

In the fall of 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression and the dawning of the New Deal, a young executive from the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet Morris L.

The initial meeting didn’t go so well, as Lincoln remembers in his autobiography, Vice President in Charge of Revolution.

Shown into his office, I told him that we of the Farm Bureau wanted to avail ourselves of the benefits of this legislation and set up our own utility plants. 

“What do you know about the utility business?” Mr. Cooke asked.

“Nothing,” I admitted cheerfully. “I was trained in dairying and animal husbandry.”