Abstract

"Central Maine Power: Electric Power as a Means to the Betterment of Society, 1915-1929"

Stefano Tijerina, University of Maine (stefano.tijerina@maine.edu)

In the early 20th Century Central Maine Power (CMP) was trying to position itself as a dominant local and regional leader in the electric power business, while at the same time advancing the use of electric power through the education of consumers. To achieve this, the company launched a series of programs across the rural communities of Maine in order to push for the transition away from wood, steam and coal, and toward the use of electric power. In the name of the betterment of society, CMP leadership launched a series of education programs and policy proposals throughout the 1910s and 1920s to help sectors of society transition to electricity. This included marketing campaigns to help the household transition from wood to electricity, research pilot programs designed to demonstrate the efficiency of electric power for the operation of farms, and campaigns to push for the modernization of transportation by shifting from steam to electric power, as in the case of railway lines. This paper will focus on this temporal and spatial dimension of the history of electric power in Maine, as CMP pushed for a change in the culture of power use, connecting the incremental use of electricity with the betterment of society through processes of modernization and innovation. In its effort to educate the public about the benefit of electric power, CMP leadership advanced the idea that the transition to electricity was in the public interest. Incrementally, this allowed the company to grow and expand its services across the state, eventually controlling land and water resources in the name of progress and economic development. This initiative took a hit during the Great Depression, but at that point the company had secured the consumer culture’s transition to electric power.