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By Root 889 0

kerosene lamps disappeared, so did the last vestige of a central fire in the home. Electric light was everywhere, yet concentrated nowhere; everyone sat in the halo of his or her own lamp. The flameless light also brought with it myriad possibilities never before imaginable, since it could be placed where an open flame could not. For instance, one guide to electricity in the home suggested: "In the parlor an illuminated painted vase, lighted from within, may vie in attractiveness with the pictures on the walls, whose colors are almost as readily appreciated by incandescent as by day light, while opalescent globes of varied shade tone the brightness everywhere into subdued harmony.... On the veranda the lamps shine heedless of the wind. A very pretty effect can also be produced in conservatories, by suspended lamps of different colors half hidden in the foliage."

Yet electricity did provide a new hearth: the radio, which was also among the most popular electric appliances. The family gathered around voices that broke the membrane between home and the world—voices coming from everywhere, bringing them music, news, weather, farm reports, and preachers. "When they say 'The Radio' they don't mean a cabinet, an electrical phenomenon, or a man in a studio," writer E. B. White said of his community; "they refer to a pervading and somewhat godlike presence which has come into their lives and homes. It is a mighty attractive idol. After all, the church merely holds out the remote promise of salvation: the radio tells you if it's going to rain tomorrow."

By 1920 electric service reached 35 percent of urban and suburban homes. The advent of electric trolleys and the automobile had spurred the move of many middle-class families from the cities to newly built neighborhoods on the outskirts, which had electric service included. Meanwhile, many poor city neighborhoods, home to immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and rural people who'd moved to the city, remained relentlessly in the dark. They had about as much expectation that electric light would come to them soon as an Aleutian Islander did. The social surveys of the time—such as those from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Lawrence, Massachusetts—which took stock of the deteriorating conditions in crowded city neighborhoods, investigated the lack of natural light, the poor sewage and water systems, and the questionable cleanliness of the milk supply. The surveys didn't mention the dearth of electricity, for not even social scientists yet imagined that access to electricity might be the right of every citizen.

For many immigrant and black city dwellers, the electric life could be quite proximate: poor neighborhoods could exist in the midst of some of the wealthiest sections of a city. In Washington, D.C., they were hidden in plain sight:

Walk around the outside of this block and you will see nothing peculiar about it. There are two imposing apartment buildings, the former residence of a senator, a handsome club house, several stylish boarding establishments and a number of three and four story, wholesome private houses. Your attention would have to be directed specifically to the four narrow wagon ways which run inward irregularly from the four sides of the square. A visitor from another city would take these to be passageways merely for the removal of refuse from back yards. But walk a hundred feet down one of these obscure byways and you find yourself on the borders of a new and strange community ... little wooden or brick houses whose rear doors point toward the rear entrances and separate yards of palatial residences.

David Hajdu, the biographer of jazz composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn, describes the Homewood section of Pittsburgh where Strayhorn grew up: "The whites generally occupied the residences on the main streets—good-sized and well-equipped two-story row houses—and the black families those in the alleys behind them—low-hanging, unpainted shelters with no electricity."

Not only were such neighborhoods dimly lit, but the work many of the women did to make ends