Southwest Electric was formed in 1937 by its rural residents after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt formed the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935.  President Roosevelt saw the need to give rural families the ability to work together to get electricity to their homes and farms.  Investor-Owned Utilities did not want to provide electricity to rural areas because they could not make a profit and pay their investors.  Rural residents of Mississippi could not afford to pay the for-profit IOUs to bring power to their homes and farms.