Last year was the centennial of home demonstration and Extension Homemakers Clubs in Arkansas, and I am just now getting around to writing about it. Arkansas in 1912 was primarily rural with most families living on farms, and even town residents often made their livings indirectly from agriculture. Agricultural extension work proved to be crucial in Arkansas as efforts were made to improve the lot of farmers, their wives and their children.
The interest in improving rural life can be traced back to the early years of the Progressive movement when President Theodore Roosevelt created the Country Life Commission under the leadership of the great Cornell University horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey, with a young Henry Wallace as a member. The commission recommended a variety of reforms, both economic and social, that often represented Roosevelt’s reform beliefs.
Roosevelt forwarded the commission’s report to Congress with an accompanying letter of his own. The president singled out “three great general and immediate needs” including “effective cooperation among farmers,” a “new kind of schools in the country” and “better means of communication, including good roads and a parcels post.” This robustly opinionated president could not stop with three recommendations, and he wrote “to these may well be added better sanitation, for easily preventable diseases hold several million country people in the slavery of continuous ill health.”
Among the programs growing out of this initiative was a movement to form clubs where rural boys and girls could learn the latest scientific techniques for growing and preserving food. The corn club movement touted scientific agriculture with the first Arkansas club being formed in 1912 in White County, followed shortly by a club in Randolph County. Within eight years, 3,100 young Arkansans belonged to corn clubs. They would soon evolve into 4-H clubs.
Canning clubs were established for girls, with the first club in Arkansas being formed at Mabelvale in Pulaski County in 1912. This club would go on to become the first home demonstration club in the nation.
The national Smith-Lever Act of 1914 provided for a program to demonstrate modern scientific practices to farmers and their families. From this law came a partnership between the national, state, and local governments to put agricultural extension agents into every county in Arkansas.
The primary purpose of the county extension agents was to bring modern scientific information and practices to rural populations. The College of Agriculture at the University of Arkansas has always been the home of extension and home demonstration work in the state.
The home demonstration movement caught on relatively quickly in Arkansas. By 1921, Arkansas was home to 239 HD clubs with 1,392 members. At the same time, 4,554 Arkansas girls belonged to 509 canning clubs. By the outbreak of World War II in 1941, Arkansas was home to 2,224 HD clubs enrolling 64,863 members.
Among the programs stressed by both extension and home demonstration agents were efforts to encourage cooperative buying and selling, improving livestock herds and poultry flocks, increasing knowledge of nutrition and modern food preparation and generally improving the quality of farm life.
By 1929 the Extension Service could brag about substantial progress made in the state. Cooperative marketing had grown from less than $900,000 to $18 million in 15 years; 75 poultry hatcheries produced more than one million chicks yearly; crop diversification was proceeding, including planting 65,000 acres of soybeans, and dairy production had grown to the point that 11 cheese making plants were operating in the state.
Interestingly, the cooperative extension and home demonstration programs were available to black Arkansans, though in a segregated fashion. “Negro agents,” a 1929 extension publication stated, “are employed in a number of counties where there is a large negro population and in the same way that white agents are employed.”
Perhaps the most important role played by the home demonstration clubs was providing social and cultural opportunities for farm women and their families. Likewise, 4-H clubs gave children a break from the monotony of farm life.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in Farmington, Ark. Email him at [email protected] .
Editorial, Pages 76 on 04/28/2013