My mother’s second husband grew up on a farm in West Texas. He was libertine but not liberal. He railed about the men in town — a summer resort — who spent the winter on unemployment, and he thought criminals had it coming, the worse the better.. He also revered FDR. (Liberals today who don’t grasp the connection are showing why they are the minority party.)
Partly it was the farm programs that rescued many from the depths. But mainly it was public power. In Texas, as in most of the country, private utilities had bypassed rural areas because they weren’t worth serving, in the utilities’ view at least.. Too much cost, not enough potential yield. Yet these utilities guarded jealously their monopolies, and resisted efforts of legislators to serve those in need.