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:
“[They] hired a large house as a receptacle for gentlewomen, who either had no fortunes, or so little that it would not support them. For these they made the most comfortable institution [and] provided [them] with all conveniences for rural amusements, a library, musical instruments, and implements for various works.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“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)
“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)