From “Miss Current’s Column” by Ruth Current, North Carolina’s State Home Agent, as published in the November 1940 issue of The Southern Planter
I many times have heard Dr. Jane S. McKimmon, Assistant Director Extension and former State Home Demonstration Agent, tell how the home demonstration club women of North Carolina accepted the challenge and rallied to her call for service during the World War. Mrs. McKimmon says: “The war necessitated much emergency work, and organized home demonstration clubs proved an efficient piece of organized rural machinery through which the county, State and Nation could speak to the farm home and through which in return women could respond to their government’s call.”
We are calling again on our club membership and rural people to serve in the national defense program, and they will do their part today and tomorrow in the same fine enthusiastic way. Rural people always can be depended on.
In Camden County, home demonstration club women have included in their 1941 Plan of Work the following goals:
Our Bit in the National Defense Program
1. We will endeavor to grow better gardens, plant a greater variety of fruits and vegetables.
2. We will pan for better balanced meals in order to have stronger, happier families.
3. We will do our bit to improve our homes both inside and out.
4. We will cooperate in every way to help create more civic interest and pride in our communities and county.
At a recent meeting the Methodist preacher in Murphy, North Carolina, said to the women of District I of The North Carolina Federation of Home Demonstration Clubs: “It is appropriate that your meetings are held in our churches. You women are preparing and making better homes on earth while we ministers are preparing you for a home in heaven.”
Canning for the Family
Lena Pressly, a 17-year-old 4-H Club girl from Speedwell, North Carolina, has canned between 8,000 and 9,000 pints of fruits and vegetables for her family in the past five years. Lena says most of this food was used by her family with the exception of 375 quarts of beans and berries which she sold for $75, using the money to buy clothes and books that she might be able to finish high school.
She has been in 4-H Club Work for five years, lives on an 85-acre farm, and has carried garden and home beautification projects in addition to canning.
Lena entered Western Carolina Teachers College at Cullowhee as a freshman this fall.
Pressure Cookers
Four hundred and seventy-six pressure cookers have been placed in homes in Jackson County. Mrs. Mamie Sue Evans, home agent, says “Home pantries are full to overflowing. Our people are well provided for this year, with a wide variety of canned fruits and vegetables.”
Bookmobile
The Gaston County Bookmobile served 8,646 rural borrowers last year at 44 stations in the county with a total circulation of 250,825 books.
The following report from home demonstration clubs shows how many books were borrowed by club members.
Club
|
July 1, 1939-June 30, 1940
|
July to October, 1940
|
Bethesda
|
2,918
|
761
|
Costner
|
7,441
|
1,721
|
Harden
|
12,014
|
2,876
|
Landers Chapel
|
417
|
786
|
Mt. Beulah
|
4,825
|
613
|
Riverbend
|
4,212
|
1,497
|
Sunnyside
|
8,912
|
1,485
|
Willis
|
273
|
877
|
Book review certificates have been awarded to 429 home demonstration club women this fall at annual Achievement Day programs. We are hoping some of the better books will be purchased by club members for the home library. Books, especially good ones, give an atmosphere to a home that nothing else does.
Collect of Club Women of America
Keep us O God, from pettiness; let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault finding and leave off self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face without self-pity, and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses straightforward and unafraid.
Let us take time for all things, make us grow calm, serene and gentle.
Grant that we may realize it is the little things that create differences; that in the big things of life we are as one.
And may we strive to touch and to know the great common woman’s heart of us all; and O Lord God, let us not forget to be kind.
--Mary Stewart, Colorado
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