LIGHT AND THEN POWER: SIXTY YEARS OF A NORTH GEORGIA ELECTRIC MEMBERSHIP CO-OP (2001)

Amicalola Electrical Membership Co-operative began in 1940 as one of the last electrical membership co-ops. Rather than benefiting from the advantages of the experience of older EMCs, it suffered from many of the same problems while overcoming some obstacles uniquely its own. As a case study, it tells the common history and particular problems of such ventures.

This Georgia EMC consists of most of Pickens and Gilmer counties; large areas of Cherokee, Dawson, and Lumpkin counties; and very small parts of Bartow, Gordon, Murray, and Fannin counties. The boundaries do not conform with county lines because of the "energy geography." The Tennes­see Valley Authority (TVA) serves customers immediately north of this EMC but the rest of its area consisted chiefly what no other electrical supplier could reach. The privately owned Georgia Power Company served Jasper, Ellijay, and Blue Ridge, starting in the early 1930s, while following the area's only railroad. Georgia Power also powered the largest local employer, the Georgia Marble Company, in Pickens and Cherokee counties. Forsyth EMC and Jackson EMC, reached some farms in Pickens and Lumpkin counties respectively. These EMCs, although formed through the REA, were originally powered by Georgia Power. A few mills, shops, gins, and farms did have small generators. Kerosene refrigerators and carbide gas lights could be found in a few homes. Some farmers, encouraged by their county agents, unsuccessfully requested power from the TVA, Forsyth EMC, and Georgia Power. Even after the creation of Amicalola, Forsyth and Jackson EMCs offered to sell to the new EMC what limited lines they had in the area. Eventually, Forsyth did so unload 18.55 miles of lines to Amicalola.

With mountains, poverty, lack of adequate transportation, and only small areas of economic development, this territory seemed exactly the place that the Rural Electrification Adminis­tration, created in 1935, intended to help. However, this area proved almost beyond even the reach of the REA. Around the small islands of electricity and relative pros­perity there existed almost another world. The southern area consists of hill country but most of Amicalola's territory in­cludes the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. Here paved streets and highways were just coming into existence in 1940. In heavy rains, only foot travel became possible. Families typically lived in log pens liberally called "cabins," still being constructed as hous­ing in the late 1930s. Such mountain families survived on little more than what could be grown on small patches of flat land and the hillsides. The topography proved so steep that mules, rather than horses, were almost exclusively used for plowing. Cash crops consisted of cotton in Pickens and Cherokee counties; apples and other perishables along the railroad; and elsewhere of chestnuts and illegal whiskey. Products were frequently carried to Atlanta by wagon even after the railroad and trucks became avail­able.

In their poverty, these people had suffered additional recent, successive, and significant, economic reverses by 1940, including the effects of the boll weevil, the chestnut blight, the nation-wide depression, and the end of prohibition. They and their descendants remember, and still regard, themselves as extremely conservative, suspicious of change, and not entirely comfortable with the modern world.

Amicalola would never have existed and widespread electrical power made available in this area until many years later but for the efforts of one man. Steven Clayton Tate (1907-1958) of Pick­ens County, a former state senator and a member of the Tate family that owned and controlled the Georgia Marble Company, created the new co-op. Although the Depression had left the marble industry on hard times, the Tates were still the area's political and financial power. The Georgia Marble Company had a steam powered generator almost from its creation in 1884 and the Tate family home had electric lights even before the city of Atlanta. Georgia Marble provided electricity for company housing in the communities of Tate, Marble Hill, and Nelson, which con­tinued when Georgia Power began providing the power for plant operations in the early 1930s. A typical unit of company housing had only lights and one outlet although the homes of upper management could have more connections.

Working with the Agricultural Adjustment Agency and Pickens County county agent A. C. Moore, Jr., the offices of both were on the second floor of the Edge Building in Jasper, Steve Tate began putting his EMC together in late 1939. He held what he described as a grassroots "mass meeting" at the Pickens County courthouse on December 12, 1939. The persons attending were actually a carefully selected group of local leaders in Pickens, Dawson, Gilmer, and Cherokee counties known for being sympathetic with rural electrification. J. J. Ossuen of the REA attended and discussed the details of forming an electric co-op.

Amicalola EMC then unofficially formed, with Tate as its president and eight other men as directors. Seventy-five miles of lines were initially planned, with a goal of a quick expansion to 200 miles, all paid for with an initial REA loan of $200,000. The new board petitioned for incorporation on January 2, 1940, which received approval on February 10. The first official board meet­ing took place on the second floor of the Edge Building, in A. C. Moore's office, on February 24.

To just obtain enough initial subscribers for Amicalola to join the REA, Tate signed on the Georgia Marble Company housing in Tate, Marble Hill, and Nelson. The Georgia Marble Company later sold these 27.4 miles of lines to Amicalola, although the company actually sold only the 675 connections, as the lines strung from roof tops and trees, were an incompatible system that Amicalola had to replace. Poles were erected for the first time to carry the wires. The REA sent notification of the first allocation of funds, $332,000, on August 17, 1940. The first resulting electrification for Gilmer, Pickens and Cherokee counties, twenty-five miles and ninety customers, came in late April 1941; and the initial system through those counties and into Dawson, came fully on line in July 1941.

To move beyond this start, Steve Tate began what many people viewed as a crusade to win over subscribers. All available local leadership, such as colonial agents, were enlisted to sign on members. People were persuaded to buy light. North Georgians regarded electricity as risky, impractical, and expensive, but they also knew well the problems, danger, and expense of oil lan­terns. An early Amicalola member remembered trying to light her family's sole lamp while the wind through the cabin cracks blew out the match before she could reach the wick. Another first customer related how, when he first turned on his electric light, he saw the cracks between the logs in his cabin for the first time, as light streamed out. For most members, Amicalola initially offered little more than light. Cabins and other old housing could had no means of wiring for outlets and used receptacles on the light sockets for appliances.

Early members remembered that easily ninety percent of their neighbors welcomed Amicalola. Enthusiasm for electricity led to sometimes tragic misunderstandings. Some families wired their homes, only to then learn that Amicalola would not reach them for years. Conversely some new houses were built directly under power lines, a particular hazard after television roof antennas became popular, on the belief that close proximity to the line improved power reception. Electricians, claiming approval by Amicalola, offered to wire homes for fees. Their victims would later learn that the EMC did not (and has never) endorse or take responsibil­ity for any electrician. Until almost the present time, thieves have risked life and injury, with one suffering electrocution, trying to steal Amicalola's copper power lines.

Stringing lines through a region with few roads proved a problem never entirely resolved. With roads little different from the surrounding terrain, crews had no qualms about running lines across corn and cotton fields. Today, forests have replaced many of those fields, making the terrain less accessible than in the 1940s. Ultimately, cross country lines have cost the co-op for later customers built along the roadsides and not in the woods the lines now cross. Roads have improved but to keep up the old lines, Amicalola linemen still learn cross country pole setting. This skill has become rare and proved invaluable in coastal areas when north Georgia linemen have helped in replacing long standing poles downed by hurricanes. Today Amicalola systematically replaces cross country with road side lines.

The company's first vehicles, ordinary trucks, did not help on the rugged terrain. They could not handle mountain roads after heavy rains. Linemen sought out farmers for the loan of mules or tractors to drag the poles. When no other means were available, crews carried the poles by hand. Right of ways were originally cleared with axes and hand saws; holes were dug for poles with simple post hole diggers. Some farmers volunteered to do this work to obtain electricity as soon as possible; others earned extra income during the Depression by doing this clearing as sub contractors.

However, not everyone welcomed the coming of Amicalola Electric Membership Co-op. Even today, perhaps ten potential customers still decline to sign on. James Hobson, a large land owner and farmer near Jasper, initially declined to even allow the utility to pass through his land. Far from being an unsophisticated isolationist, he obtained plants from around the world for his horticultural projects, including the Chinese Chestnut as a replacement for the American variety killed by the blight. His botanical gardens drew visitors from throughout the country. His two houses were powered by a room full of batteries that were recharged by a gas generator. When Amicalola finally decided to go around his property, he relented and granted a right of way through his land, giving access not only for his farm but also for his immediate neighbors.

David Hobson, son of James Hobson on Chinese Chestnut Tree in Jasper 1917

Changing how people felt about billing also became a prob­lem. Contrary to what some private power companies had claimed, rural America did find electricity affordable. However, concepts such as having to pay a monthly power bill confused some people. Mountain families traditionally paid bills annually and often kept debts at local stores until a crop or other wind­fall provided the money to settle accounts. The co-op found itself conducting a public education campaign on the safe ways to pay bills regularly. Many of the utility's first customers did not have checking accounts and when unable to pay in person, sent cash by mail that sometimes disappeared. Amicalola even received at least one payment that had been sent to the Sears Roebuck & Co., the customer presuming that the both bills were paid at the same address.

Certainly Steve Tate had much to do to promote Amicalola when his utility first came on line in 1941. The first annual meeting of the Amicalola EMC in Jasper on July 26, 1941 remains one of the largest gatherings ever held in that town. Three thou­sand people attended, consuming 2,400 pounds of barbecue lamb and beef, with six barrels of lemonade. The dignitaries were Governor Eugene Talmadge, Senator Richard Russell, Congressman Frank Welchel, and State Attorney General Ellis Arnold. Between the speeches local quartets performed. Movies and news features were shown at the Jasper Theater for adults and children. The Pickens County Progress promoted the meeting and called it "One of the Biggest Achievements in Past Thirty Five Years." The paper fea­tured salutes to Amicalola by local merchants although neglecting to mentioned was that these merchants were on Georgia Power.

Steve Tate acted as master of ceremonies, beginning a long public career in rural electrification. He earned national atten­tion for arguing before Congress that EMCs needed the same access to the copper surplus afforded the private utility companies during World War II. He also served as the first president of the National Rural Electrical Cooperative Association (1942-1944), chairman of the Georgia Highway Board (1943-1947), one of the first presidents of the Georgia EMC, and chairman of the U. S. Space Control Committee for the Fourth Service Command. Locally he became not only director and president of the Amicalola EMC but, in 1945, he also took on the job of acting manager of the utility for a higher salary ($350 per month) than the full time manager A. C. Moore had received.

Amicalola EMC needed its spectacular beginning to help it over the hard times that followed. The same issue of the Progress that promoted the first annual meeting also carried an advertise­ment from Georgia Power about the government's call for conserva­tion of energy. The United States had already begun hording resources in anticipation of entry into World War II. When the war did come, material and labor for power lines became practi­cally nonexistent. Congress also imposed restrictions on expansion of utility systems until the end of the conflict.

Amicalola, however, tried to grow despite the war. The pre­viously approved next addition, the "B" Project, moved forward, sometimes with "self help" programs to use local resources as much as possible. Amicalola earned the REA's ire when funds reserved for paying future interest on its loans were instead spent to replace Georgia Marble Company housing lines to Amicalo­la's standards. At the end of the war, the co-op found itself in dire financial straits. No Georgia EMC has ever defaulted on a loan. However, Amicalola could not regularly make full interest payments until 1951. For years, after expenses and taxes, all remaining funds were paid to the federal government as interest on loans. One of the early managers remembered, as his first action, taking out a loan to meet the payroll. Annual meetings were suspended during the war because of gasoline and tires being rationed. Board meetings were held irregularly. A special called meeting of May 24, 1946, gave the directors the option of removing the officers or the utility being taken over by the REA. The officers were removed, although almost all of them were immediately reinstated in new positions. Steve Tate lost his positions as president and acting manager. Tate remained on the board as a director but the nominating committee refused to renominate him at the first annual members meeting after the war. He received a nomination from the floor but only fourteen votes from the general membership present.

The new directors learned that Tate had been using Amicalola funds as a personal expense account for travels and entertainment across the country, much as his family had similarly abused Georgia Marble Company funds for many years. The board de­clined his request for immunity from the consequences of an REA audit of the utility's accounts and forced him to give up his office at Amicalola. The B Project had proven costly and poorly constructed. Even houses with no occupants had been connected.

However, the following year, at the next annual meeting, the rest of the board of directors, with the exception of John Ben­nett of Cherokee County, were also turned out and a new slate of directors were nominated and elected from the floor, the only directors in Amicalola's history not chosen by the nominating committee first. One of the key issues had been that while Steve Tate and his boards had counted each of the Georgia Marble company houses as a member of the co-op in getting loans from the REA. At the annual members's meeting, however, Tate treated these 675 households as only two votes, one for Nelson and one for Tate/Marble Hill. The ousted board members attempted to have the new board's election contested and even succeeded, through the old manager, in briefly shutting down the utility and laying off the em­ployees. The new board went to court and received recognition by the REA as the legitimate directors. However, no sooner had they established themselves as the utility's management than all of the office staff resigned in the middle of the monthly billing. They quit when the new general manager refused to fire the office manager. However, the office manager then resigned under pressure from the remaining employees.

The general manager later gave a report of his six months progress that used such words as "building a firm foundation" and "bringing order out of chaos." The board thanked him and remarked that he had probably understated the problems. The directors did face a long list of serious complaints. Amicalola had purchased poles and equipment without competitive bids. The company did not have a list of its members. Complaints came from the Georgia Marble Company about service. Not only had Amica­lola failed to met the stone company's needs but, at one point, it even asked to buy power from the marble company's generator. Neither the trucks nor the employees wore any identification. The directors from areas where moonshine related violence remained a problem were particularly insistent upon the employees and trucks being clearly identified as Amicalola employees working only on co-op business. Police informants on bootleggers were also known as "linemen," and taxi driver Earl Holbert of Jasper had recently been murdered by a local crime syndicate, allegedly for what he told authorities.

Had Amicalola been a private business it would have gone bankrupt. The REA, however, forced Amicalola to reorganize or suffer take over. Conversely, the Rural Electrification Administration did allow the utility to make only partial payments on interest due, while receiving still new loans for more lines. These policies might seem irregular but the new lines and repairs on the old, with changes brought about by the reorganized and later the new board, saved the co-op. In 1950, a new loan of almost half of a million dollars made power available to almost everyone in the region. Starting in 1951, Amicalola started turning a profit. It has remained in the black ever since, has met all of its interests payments, and has grown annually by double digit percentages. Members have increased from 5,104 in 1954 to more than 20,000 today and from 1,290 miles of line in 1954 to 2,526 miles in 1984.

This increase has been substantial despite the change in demography in Amicalola's territory. The small farms and cabins that were the first customers in the 1940s were replaced by agri-businesses, second home communities, and forests. Families that had lived in those cabins moved to towns and jobs elsewhere. Amicalola encouraged the changes. The area's poultry industry would hardly be possible without rural electrification for water pumps. The small, dilapidated, chicken house now stands abandoned next to the enormous poultry "factory." Some small chicken farms have become operations with twenty-three or more branches. Tatum Hatchery in Dawson County grew with Amicalola EMC to become an international operation that has received a citation from the President of the United States. Other area "agri-factories" include electrified hog farms, apple houses, and fruit tree nurseries. Nationally known operations such as Lawson's Nursery in Pickens County would have been almost unimaginable to anyone in 1940, except possibly James Hobson.

This campaign to power progress coincided with the utility's battle against geography to make electricity available throughout the region. In 1972, the Beacon, Amicalola's newsletter, proudly announced the addition of the sisters Vera and Eva Taylor to the membership. They had held out on joining for decades but finally signed on under pressure from their family. Amicalola ran a special line for half a mile to reach their Jones Mountain home. However, the utility reached what might be termed as the final frontier in 1970 when the Boatwright family of Lake Conasauga in Murray County received power. Right of way problems had kept lines from reaching this family. Amicalola gained national attention for building a mile and a half of new lines to reach them.

Amicalola originally had meter readers for Tate, Nelson, and Marble Hill. Some customers saw them as an invasion of privacy. Today the meters must be read because of attempts to bypass wire the meters. Early meter reader Fuller Forrest remembers one dog that felt obligated to grab his pants leg and hold on to him anytime Forrest was on the property. When the owner asked him why he didn't just kick the small dog, Forrest replied that he didn't want to make the animal mad. The "outdoor people" have also had to contend with dangerous animals, weather, and motorists. Once Amicalola's linemen were called to rescue a treed (and tranquilized) bear. However, the meter readers, linemen, and other Amicalola personnel have also saved lives, reported burglaries, checked on elderly citi­zens, and performed other public services while working their jobs. Amicalola's "good Samaritans" have been aided by their vehicles being equipped with radios and all person­nel being trained in first aid and CPR.

Such progress has not been entirely of benefit to Amicalola. More customers has meant more and newer equipment. Past loans have been paid. However, the new lines and equipment required new loans from the REA and from the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (or CFC), a co-op of the electrical co-ops to borrow money from a pool of their own joint funds. The money went for more and newer lines, sub sta­tions, trucks, and even offices. Currently, Amicalola borrows seventy percent of its funds from the REA and the rest from CFC.

Other rough spots on the road to electrification involved the use of the power by private home owners. Amicalola encouraged increased customer use of its power, particularly for indoor plumbing. Cartoons were published in the Beacon of farmers who pumped water to their barns and chicken houses but didn't obtain the same service for their own kitchens. The Beacon, never subtle, even asked these farmers, in bold letters, "Are You Buying or Selling Your Wife?" Amicalola could take little comfort in a survey of customers in 1955 that showed water pumps only barely edging out television as an electrical priority. The co-op originally sold, but discontinued selling in 1946, electric appliances, particu­larly water heaters. As early as 1941, it helped members to obtain federal loans for buying appliances. The utility also shared an electrical demonstration bus with Georgia Power in the early 1940s; offered an appliance finance program in 1950; spon­sored contests among school children on essays about electrifica­tion, sometimes giving trips to Washington for winning essays; and conducted classes and demonstrations in cooking with elec­tricity.

Finding qualified employees also proved a struggle. Amicalola has publicly been an equal oppor­tunity employer since the 1960s and has never had problems pass­ing the regularly scheduled civil rights examinations required by law. No women, however have applied for outside jobs and almost no African-Americans have applied for any position with the co-op. Only two of the outside employees (one has quit) and one inside employee (a janitor since retired) hired were black. However, only Pickens and Cherokee counties in Amicalola's area have any African-American popula­tion at all. During the 1940s, the total number of employees usually stood between nineteen and twenty-five persons. Today the utility has more than 150 employees, inside and outside, and an almost negligible turn over rate. Then, as now, such special projects were contracted out to private companies. The "outside employees" of Amicalola add customers to existing lines and do maintenance work.

Accidents in such work always happen but in fifty years Amicalola has only had two job related deaths and two serious injuries: two linemen have been burned by live wires; one lineman unknowingly climbed a damaged pole that then fell on him; and one lineman fell in a concealed well while trying to disconnect power from a burning trailer. At least one person, a child, died from electrocution by a live wire. Restor­ing power during ice storms adds the dangers of treacherous roads and working in darkness. However, company accidents have been shown to actually decline during ice storms. Rattlesnakes, copperheads, and various stinging insects remain beyond the help of improved technology.

The physical geography of Amicalola's territory has made their work a great adventure. Pole trucks with wenches and four wheel drive; chain saws; bush hogs; hole dig­gers; bucket trucks; and other equipment were developed much later and accepted by Amicalola employees but only after being proven in the steep, rugged, terrain of the North Georgia Moun­tains.

The trees that make up the area's scenery remain a particularly uncompromising enemy of the power lines. Cut­ting tree branches and other right of way maintenance has always been the single greatest operating expense of Amicalola EMC and the second largest overall cost except for the purchase of power. The utility early offered to remove for free anything threatening their power lines and keeps a large back log of requests for trees and branches to be cut. Pine beetle infestations have increased the damage done by the falling of the native pines. Even professional lumbermen call the utility to cut trees near the lines. In 1960, an ice storm brought down branches and whole trees that shut down power in all of Amicalola's territory, in a few areas for as long as six weeks. In the 1970s, some ice storms and cold weather ran continuously breaking lines almost as fast as they could be repaired. Line crews had to give up until the weather improved. Public reaction during these storms has ranged from providing the linemen with food and aid to vicious complaints. Severe winds, even when below tornado strength, in the north Georgia mountains not only bring down lines but prove so severe as to prevent linemen from being able to reach the downed wires. Amicalola has encouraged large farming operations, especially chicken houses, and medical facilities to have emergency genera­tors. It joined with all of the state's power companies--municipal, EMC, and private--in an organized program for sharing crews and equipment in times of bad weather.

Progress in repairing localized power outages has been made due to improved communications. Amicalola and the REA encouraged federal loans for local telephone service, although none of the EMCs provide telephones. One of the first presidents of Amicalola, Samuel B. Green, did own the Ellijay Telephone Company. Initially phone lines shared poles with Amicalola and when the lines for one were down, generally, so were the lines for the other, leaving the customers to write to Amicalola to report power and phone outages. For years, the co-op had difficulty educating members that outages had to be reported; that Amicalola could not automatically detect them. With better roads; separate poles for telephone lines; radio equipped vehicles; stand by crews in three offices in Jasper, Ellijay, and Dahlonega; and a twenty-four hour dispatch­er, repairs now begin almost as soon as reported.

Meeting these needs and obligations has turned from a local struggle to a joint effort by Georgia's EMCs and EMCs nationwide. New power sources dropped the price of elec­tricity through 1969; as much as twenty percent in 1963. Even today Amicalola EMC charges less per kilowatt hour than it did in 1941, although the average member uses far more electricity now than then. Debates raged between directors, members, and Amicalola with REA, over how much to structure the decreases to benefit the smaller users and persons who otherwise could not afford power.

However, the energy crises of 1970 and later drove up the expense of electricity as much as 117% in one year. Power costs were passed on to customers used to paying steadily less per kilowatt hour. Purchasing power went from forty to fifty-seven percent of Amicalola's budget. The Beacon responded with detailed expla­nations of why the rates were being raised and efforts to hold costs down. Articles on cutting electrical use became an almost regular feature. At this same time, the Georgia Power Company informed Amicalola and other EMCs that the GPC could no longer guar­antee power. To insure energy for the future, Amicalola and thirty-seven of Georgia's other EMCs, representing seventy-one percent of the state's land area, formed Oglethorpe Power EMC in 1974, a Georgia co-op of Georgia co-ops for only generating power for its members. The Beacon proclaimed that

Never before in the history of the nation has a project

of such magnitude been entered into by the cooperative

and private sectors of the electrical industry.

Oglethorpe Power owns large percentages of several power plants including both of Georgia's nuclear facilities. Recently Oglethorpe Power purchased its own plant, near Rome, GA, and has bought land in Pickens County, a few miles from Amicalola's headquarters, to construct a plant from the ground up. New feder­al dams, built by the EMCs but operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, also provides power for Amicalola.

At exactly this same time that power costs radically in­creased, so did the interest rate on the REA loans. Political action committees had been trying to kill Rural Electrification Administration and its loan pro­gram since even before the REA officially began. In 1951, the private utility companies celebrated "National Rural Electrifica­tion Week." The REA and the EMCs refused to participate, claiming that this campaign served as a publicity stunt to make the public believe that rural electrification had been finished, that the REA no longer served any real need. Read­er's Digest ran articles in December 1963 and September 1984 that, while calling the REA "one of the greatest success stories launched by any government," argued for an end to it. The EMCs responded with their own articles disputing the charges and the specific examples cited in the articles. In 1972, the Nixon Administration refused to spend money allocated by Congress for loans to EMCs. A compromise permitted loans from a revolving fund set aside under Presi­dent Kennedy. However, whereas the program had loaned money to the EMCs at two percent, for most loans, the money now went at five percent, or an increase of 150%. The rise in interest rates, like the increase in power costs and infla­tion, were passed onto the customers. Attacks on the REA were con­tinued under the Reagan Administration but although the first Bush White House proved a friend of the REA, the EMCs now maintains a Washington Lobby second in size only to Social Security.

The early 1970s were no less stormy for the Georgia EMCs on the state level. Amicalola and the other EMCs were never allowed to accept customers of private utility companies. However, until the electrical membership corporations finally succeeded in getting a territorial law passed in Georgia in 1973, their cus­tomers were fair game for municipal and private utility custom­ers. Amicalola and Georgia Power did have a mutual agreement to accept customers based upon proximity to lines. Today customers on the "edge" can chose either and many have preferred the EMC. In 1959, Georgia law redefined "rural" to prevent municipal elec­trical companies from taking over EMC lines when municipal boundaries were expanded.

Perhaps the most curious conflict for Amicalola and the other EMCs has been charges of being un-American, undemocratic, and even socialist. As early as the second issue of the Beacon, an article appeared on democracy and the co-op. During the McCarthy Era and after, other articles followed denouncing communism and extolling the virtues of capitalism, democracy, the American Way, and the democratic makeup of EMCs. Management of the co-op, as repeatedly explained to the readers, did not consist of a group of socialists but of a democratically elected board of directors. The territory has geographic divisions, each with a director elected from and by the full time customers of his/her respective district. As the Beacon proclaimed, each customer has no more and no less than one vote. Since 1947, perhaps a dozen names total have been put into nomination by petition (fifteen members must sign a petition for a person to be nominated) and some half a dozen times people have been nominated from the floor (any member at the annual meeting may nominate a qualified person from the floor). Directors have never been paid a salary but a fee per meeting, originally three dollars, so low that it has been criti­cized as discouraging young, working, members from being directors. The utility must make a profit to create liquid assets upon which the co-op can obtain loans and meet financial emergencies. However, these profits must also be re­funded, after twenty years or upon the death of the customer. Each year, such refunds go out by check, not merely as credits to the customers accounts.

To function, Amicalola must have an annual members meeting, with at least a quorum of 150 members. Extraordinary lengths have been taken to encourage members to come, typically including prizes, music, speakers, and refreshments. However, most members have never attended an annual meeting and know little about their co-op beyond how to pay the utility bill. In an effort to keep members informed, the Beacon began publication in 1949, without a name or even a date. J. B. Hill of Tate and Eber Perrow of White­stone won the completion for the name. Member support has proven so critical that, for many years, to encourage the reading of its articles, account numbers of members were hidden in the pages. Customers who found their numbers received small cash prizes.

This newsletter, which has twice won awards from the state EMCs, does more than help public relations. It encourages tourism and industry; provides jokes and recipes; and argues for Amicalo­la and REA issues. Never claiming objectivity, it argued against gas in its early years and published more photographs of houses destroyed by gas explosions than of power lines going up. (None of the houses shown were in Amicalola's territory, however. Most chicken houses, because of the cost, have been forced to use gas for heat, even when using electric water pumps.) It has several times urged Amicalola members to write congressmen and legislators. The Beacon has also announced, encouraged, and spotlighted new factories, Interstate 575, county indus­trial commissions, the Pickens Area Vocational-Technical School, and planned mountain communities such as Bent Tree. A frequent subject has been Amicalola Falls State Park in Dawson County and the electricity it buys from the co-op named for its falls.

Obtaining a permanent building for the utility became one of the first crusades in the Beacon. The first offices were rented rooms on the second floor of the Davis Building, built in c1880, in Jasper. Originally the Beacon presented what looked like an objective poll of members that appeared to support having a building. Later, it dropped all pretense and warned the members in all caps that a fire occurs somewhere every second and the next one "COULD BE YOUR CO-OP!" In another issue, photographs were included of a fire on the same street as the Davis Building. Plans for a building were made almost as soon as the co-op formed. The utility purchased and later sold a lot deemed too small. The Tate community offered free land for the headquarters. Amicalola finally acquired the land for the building in Jasper 1949 but not until March 1953 were the buildings erected and opened. As one of the last EMCs to borrow money from the REA for a building, Amicalola opened their current facility in 1983, also in Jasper and adjoining the new state extension of Interstate 575 that the Beacon had helped to promote. The new facilities allow the utility to keep all offices and equipment at one location, except for trucks and supplies stored at the branches in Ellijay and Dahlonega. For the first time, Amicalola has facilities large enough to hold the annual meeting on its own property. The utili­ty had previously held the meetings at the Jasper Elementary School.

Amicalola Electrical Membership Co-operative came into, passed through, and has again returned to interesting times. By rights, it should not have existed and having done so, came close to failure in its early years. Because it did succeed, many benefits of electrification reached this area of Appalachia years, even decades, earlier than if it had not survived its myriad struggles. As the Pickens County Progress commented in 1952, just after Amicalola's "dark" period (which the Progress had ignored) had passed:

No greater contribution has been made toward the improvement

of farm life and farm methods than the electrification

program. Farms that were once abandoned have been reclaimed,

new houses built, old ones remodeled. Dairying, poultry

raising, livestock and general farming is steadily improv-

ing, no doubt because of the many conveniences and labor

saving equipment in operation on thousands on farms. As our

farm neighbors prosper so will our town prosper.

Progress has come to this region, in no small part because of electrification and Georgia's surplus of energy. Whether this utility and that surplus will meet the demand that it helped create, remains to be seen, as does whether the money will be available to bring that power to new customers. Critics have accused the modern utility company raising rates for no better reason than to raise rates, of a bureaucracy more concerned with itself that its members. The next fifty years should prove no less interesting than the utility company’s first half century.

NOTES

Amicalola EMC sponsored the research for this article in commemo­ration of its fiftieth anniversary.