The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), one of the federal executive departments of the United States government charged with providing public utilities (electricity, telephone, water, sewer) to rural areas in the United States via public-private partnerships. The agency's acronym is an allusion to the Latin word rus ("countryside"), the etymological source of the word rural.
Read more about Rural Utilities Service: History, Structure, and Programs, Related Federal Legislation
Famous quotes containing the words rural, utilities and/or service:
“No, in your rural letter box
I leave this note without a stamp
To tell you it was just a tramp
Who used your pasture for a camp.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all of the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)