Mrs. L.G. Ballard Praises Home Demonstration Clubs, 1930

“Your Community Club” by Mrs. L.G. Ballard, Candler, in the December, 1930, issue of Farmers Federation News

Few people realize and appreciate the true and worthwhile value of the various community clubs such as the 4-H, Home Demonstration, PTA. And many have the idea that all clubs are only for a few who haven’t anything else to occupy their time. But only through the community having such club can the true value of each be seen.

What the church and Sunday School are spiritually to a community, the clubs are progressively. Both are so very essential to make real American citizens and homes.

No school can be its best without its PTA, both for the child’s sake and its teachers, for through the parent-teacher work the parent, child, and teacher have a chance to become really acquainted with the problems, plans, and aims of each, thus establishing a better understanding and avoiding lots of criticism.

And of just as much importance is the Community Center Club, which has the spirit and ability to get folks together in a spirit of friendliness and good will and discuss once or twice a month the needs and plans for the improvement and advancement of progress in their community. In whatever community is found such a club will be found a people enlightened, contented, friendly, and progressive; folks we like for a neighbor.

The benefits of a Home Demonstration Club can also be readily seen when these are carried on, and here in these clubs women who thought they were the most efficient home-makers are finding out by attending these clubs that one never gets too old to learn. And in one club one member admitted, although she was a splendid cook otherwise and had been housekeeping for 12 years, her biscuits were always failures until she attended a club demonstration of biscuit-making, and she is now a famed biscuit-maker.

And for the sake of the young folks of the rural community there is nothing greater than the various clubs, as the 4-H, Boy Scouts, Poultry, Calf, or such. Each helps to develop and bring out the best in the young folks. Far too many of the farm boys and girls are leaving the farms merely for the lack of a little more recreation and recognition.

So let’s study, appreciate, and support our community clubs more and thereby become better and more efficient citizens.