The 4-H Harvest. Gabriel N. Rosenberg
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organizational techniques of the industrial ideal.15
For all its victories, proponents of the cooperative turn recognized a fundamental obstacle to their ambitions: the atomized patriarchs most in need of the cooperative spirit were also those most unwilling to enter the institutions that fostered it. Experts at the USDA, such as William Lloyd, the USDA’s representative at the organizational meeting of the AFBF, worried that adult farmers, poorly educated and accustomed to the social isolation of rural living, would never accept the USDA’s recommendations, no matter how many pamphlets county agents pushed into their hands or how much they promoted farm bureaus. A decade earlier, the conflict had focused on the integration of modern planting techniques; now agricultural progressives bemoaned the overly individualistic, stubborn farmers who refused to “cooperate” or who, in the case of the Nonpartisan League and the Farmers’ Union, cooperated in ways dangerous to capitalist enterprise. As with scientific farming before it, the acceptance of a cooperative spirit would require serious cultural work beginning in youth, when rural residents were most pliable. According to Lloyd, club work was essential to effective cooperation and farm bureaus. Part of the solution to stubborn patriarchs was to train a generation of boys in “community leadership and cooperative efforts” that combined cooperation with “self-reliance” and the rudiments of businesslike agriculture. Like Mann, who announced an “awakened rural manhood,” Lloyd envisioned 4-H boys grown into splendid manhood as the key to future rural leadership. But producing such splendid manhood required a careful balance: on the one hand, boys needed to be trained to participate in collective action; on the other, they needed to cherish the spirit of commercial competition. Even by 1920, the USDA believed that 4-H, with an approach both competitive and cooperative, trained rural boys to be the extraordinary examples of rural capitalism who would, in time, grow into a generation of farmer-businessmen drawn from Jardine’s dreams.16
Before 4-H could be expected to promote cooperation, businesslike agriculture, and awakened manhood in rural America, the club system needed to be reinforced. In fact, the events of World War I had dangerously overextended the 4-H network and left it in need of serious organizational attention from the USDA. In the decade after World War I, experts at the USDA and the land-grant colleges attempted to “standardize” club work, particularly through the introduction of what O. H. Benson, the USDA’s 4-H architect, termed the “club cycle.” Experts at the USDA hoped to create “standard” 4-H clubs at the local level—clubs that shared a uniform structure and set of goals in every rural community in America. To ensure that 4-H clubs were locally supported and considered organic elements of their communities, organizers also worked hard to enroll individual farm bureaus in the organization and operation of the clubs. Within a decade of the Smith-Lever’s passage, the USDA had created a network of standard clubs, interwoven with the farm bureau, that were conducive to financial intimacy and the promotion of healthy rural manhood.
The sharp increase in agricultural production during World War I created a rural labor shortage and pulled millions of youth into agricultural production. Given considerable wartime migration to urban areas and the enlistment of potential agricultural workers, the CES recognized the need to access new sources of labor beyond just gardening. To that end, the CES focused on utilizing the labor of youth, both rural and urban. As a part of that wartime food-production program, the CES encouraged youth to enroll in a variety of agricultural clubs, framing agricultural labor in the language of national service. Many youths tended small victory gardens of produce for subsistence and local sale, but the program was often even more elaborate. To promote club work, O. H. Benson envisioned a massive “mile-long” “Boys’ and Girls’ Club Interstate Pageant.” The pageant would feature farm machinery presented as “Our 4-H Machine Guns” and the “Corn Club Cavaliers”—“40 boys mounted on horse back … bedecked with corn stalk gun, ear of corn pistol tied to belt and corn husk decorations of uniform arrangements on hats.” Youth from towns and cities also joined the effort, by converting open urban lots into gardens or by taking a work holiday in the country to help with the harvest. “Boys of Connecticut! Help the farmers with the harvest!” implored a propaganda poster. In total, more than a million youth joined clubs organized by the USDA in 1918, including more than 364,000 in garden clubs, and hundreds of thousands of urban youth traveled into the countryside at the harvest.17
Like high commodity prices, massive club enrollments were an artifact of war and fell back to earth with peace. Recognizing that the appropriations would not survive the war, many agricultural colleges had employed temporary or part-time club agents with limited experience in extension work and virtually no experience with club work. This “constantly shifting personnel,” in turn, had constructed ad hoc “costly” and “ruinous” club organizations that diverged broadly from club to club.18 Training new leaders was laborious and expensive. Inexperienced leaders made more mistakes, and too many mistakes could damage the broader reputation of the program. A bad calf club might produce a dead calf. “It takes a long time to overcome the prejudice thus established,” pointed out one Wisconsin club leader. As nationalist sentiments began to recede and the extension service laid off its temporary agents, club enrollments sank to prewar levels. The war brought an enormous expansion of club enrollments but had left the program badly overextended, even as the deteriorating agricultural situation demanded, more than ever, a vigorous and efficient club network.19
Extension officials in Washington and club workers in the states argued that the club network needed structural improvement and that individual club workers needed better training. After a conference on club standardization in 1918, the USDA circulated a definition of a “standard” club to bring clubs in line with its educational philosophy. A “standard” club required a minimum of five members “working on the same project” under the charge of an adult leader. Each club would elect a set of officers from its members, and the clubs would follow a program of work over the course of the year. If the club achieved that basic standard, the USDA issued it an official charter. Clubs might also acquire a “seal of achievement” if they met an even more rigorous standard. To acquire the seal, clubs needed to hold a minimum of six meetings, to publicly exhibit project results, and to organize a team to give “public demonstrations” of the club’s production methods. The club needed to secure a project completion rate of 60 percent from its membership, to file a concluding report with the extension service of its activities, to organize “a judging team” for fair competitions, to host “an achievement day program,” and to integrate its members “in the farm bureau or other county extension organization.”20 The USDA circulated material that defined the standard components and practices involved in club work.21 In addition to this uniform structure, the more rigorous training of leaders established a standard procedure, or club “cycle,” as O. H. Benson put it.22
The USDA insisted that the clubs be organized according to “democratic” principles that emphasized the clubs’ voluntary nature and their deliberative structure. Farm youth joined individual clubs organized on a community-by-community basis by state club specialists, county extension agents, or, in counties that employed one, a club agent. The organization of a club began early in the year, with an enrollment campaign by county agents. Once a base level of enrollments had been achieved, club members elected officers—usually a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, and historian—who were charged with running individual meetings and keeping collective records (individual club members were responsible for keeping personal project records). The club elected the voluntary adult leader, a responsible adult who attended meetings, regularly checked in with the county agent, distributed material provided by the CES to club members, planned and chaperoned club social events, and regularly made home visits to check the progress of projects. “A carefully planned system of follow-up work contemplates a visit from a leader not less than once a month, [and] a brief letter, giving timely advice should be sent by the local leader to each member,” Benson explained.23 In the first decade of club work, teachers constituted a large portion of club leaders. By 1925, fewer than a quarter of club leaders were teachers, as farmers, bankers, merchants, and homemakers replaced them.24