North Carolina Girls and the Tomato Clubs

By I.O. Schaub, written for the March 1953 issue of Extension Farm-News, after he had retired as director of the Agricultural Extension Service, N.C. State College, Raleigh. Corn and Tomato Clubs were the basis for 4-H Clubs.

From the beginning of the boy’s Corn Club work, there were some girls enrolled for that project. Obviously, however, very few, if any, anticipated that there would ever be a large enrollment of girls in connection with field projects requiring a large amount of hard physical labor. A number of people gave thought to the development of a type of project for girls more suitable than corn.

Some members of the staff in Dr. Knapp’s philosophy, however, that it was better to take one project at a time carrying it along until it received the necessary recognition on the part of the public and then take on additional activities. Apparently the Corn Club work developed more rapidly than Dr. Knapp anticipated and by the end of 1909, he was ready to sponsor activities with girls.

Dr. Knapp and members of the staff discussed various ideas with people in a number of states and out of these discussions it was decided that the girls’ work would be initiated on the basis of having each club member grow and can one-tenth acre of tomatoes. The tomato was selected because it was generally grown and appreciated. It was more easily canned without danger of spoilage than was true with most vegetables, and it was felt that one-tenth of an acre would provide not only for the family but would produce enough for sale. The idea of having some for sale was a significant factor for at that time spending money with the average farm family was exceedingly small.

PLAN OUTLINED

During the Christmas holidays of 1909, O.B. Martin addressed the annual meeting of the State Educational Association in Columbia, S.C. He outlined the plans for a garden and canning project and pointed out specifically that it would tie schools more closely to the farm homes. The teachers listened with interest but only one responded with definite action. Miss Marie S. Kromer from Aiken County went home and spent her Saturdays writing letters to girls trying to enlist them in the project. By spring, she had 46 volunteers who were growing a tenth acre each according to the instructions from the Department of Agriculture. During the growing season, Miss Kromer, the County Superintendent of Schools, and also the State Farm Demonstration Agent visited the girls, and in time the tomatoes started to ripen and the next step was to get them canned.

Miss Kromer’s project received wide publicity even in the early stages and a public-spirited woman in New England financed a summer of domestic science study in New England for Miss Kromer. She left just after her school closed so arrangements had to be made to teach the club girls how to can.

AIKEN MEETING

Dr. Knapp’s office had sponsored the project so that office was expected to furnish the leadership. Mr. Martin was assigned the job. He knew practically nothing about canning so he looked around for skilled help. He enlisted the services of Miss Hyde, the Home Economics teacher at Winthrop College, and also rounded up a tinner, a plumber, and a carpenter. A meeting was called at Aiken on the courthouse square on July 16, 1910. The girls were invited to bring in their tomatoes. A rather large canning outfit was shipped from Illinois and set up on the courthouse lawn. There were long tables at which women and girls worked, blanching and peeling tomatoes. This canning school ran for three days and it was then moved to another town where the scene was repeated.

One 14-year-old girl who attended the session at Aiken produced on her tenth acre plot 512 No. 3 cans of tomatoes, and it was estimated that her profit was $40. This project in Aiken County aroused so much community interest that a fair was organized, capitalized at $8,000 for the sole purpose of climaxing the annual labors of the boys and girls’ clubs.

Wide publicity was, of course, given to this initial endeavor, and by fall there was an insistent demand for a similar type of program in many communities in several states.

About the same time this work was initiated in South Carolina, a similar activity was promoted in Virginia but without the specific project of one-tenth acre of tomatoes. As a matter of fact, Miss Ella Agnew of Virginia received an appointment from the Department as State Agent of Girls’ Tomato Clubs before a similar appointment was given to Miss Kromer. Miss Agnew, therefore, was the first Home Demonstration Agent ever appointed by the Department of Agriculture.

Late in the year of 1910, similar agents were appointed in Tennessee and in Mississippi.

Miss Susie Powell, first agent in Mississippi, visited Washington in the fall of 1910 and, in a conversation with Dr. Knapp, asked the question, “What does it all mean?”

Dr. Knapp’s reply was “Cultivation of the tomato plant will take us into the home garden. Canning the tomatoes will give us entrance to the farm kitchen. Tomatoes fresh and canned will be a valuable supplement to the family diet. The sale of tomatoes will provide an income for the girls. What the program will do for the farm home depends on our interest, intelligence, and perseverance.”

MONEY APPROPRIATED

Dr. Knapp, responding to the general demand, arranged with the General Education Board of New York to finance the Canning Club program and at the board meeting on February 3, 1911, appropriated $5,000 for that purpose. His plan provided that where county workers were appointed, the board would give $75, provided the county would appropriate a like amount. It was assumed that this would employ woman agents for two summer months. The salary was low and the work hard, but part of the agents’ reward was the sudden revelation of how much their work meant to some unnoticed and neglected youngsters.

It was from this General Education Board appropriate that North Carolina was given its first allotment. As I recall, we were to receive $300 and to begin the work in two counties. I had become fairly well acquainted with the county superintendents of schools and after a conference with Dr. J.Y. Joyner, the work was offered to Guilford and Robeson counties. For some reason Robeson County failed to develop the program. In Guilford, Tom Foust, the county superintendent, became very much interested and after several conferences it was agreed that instead of starting the work in one school, it would be tried in two, but with a corresponding reduction in salary to be paid to two teachers so as to live within our total budget.

The first club was organized in March 1911, in the Pleasant Garden School with Miss Lucille Kennett as agent. Miss Kennett did not serve the entire summer and she was succeeded by Miss Annie Lee Rankin. The club was also organized at McLeansville and as I recall, Miss Rankin served that club as well as the one at Pleasant Garden. Probably a short time later, Mrs. J.E. Coltrane, the teacher at Jamestown, had charge of a club in that community.

CANNING SCHOOL

The actual records of those activities do not seem to be available at this time. I do remember, however, attending a canning school at the spring back of the Rankin home at McLeansville, which was an all-day affair. None there had had experience in trying to seal tin cans. I was assigned the job of heating the sealing iron. I could get the iron hot but it just would not give us a smooth seal. We had plenty of grief and I now wonder how many of those cans of tomatoes really kept.

By 1912, Dr. Knapp and his staff in Washington were completely sold on the possibilities, and, with increased appropriation from the General Education Board, the work was expanded into other states and also the appropriate in the first states was increased. During the summer or early fall, I was advised from Washington that they thought it advisable for me to find a woman to take charge of the girls’ canning work. Perhaps they had heard of my lack of success in teaching people how to seal a tin can.

I began searching for a satisfactory person. I happened to be living next door to a lady with a charming personality and bubbling over with enthusiasm for any job she undertook. I approached her regarding this work. She knew scarcely anything regarding the program and naturally was somewhat cautious in making a commitment. Finally, however, she advised me that she would undertake it for a three-month period, but on the condition that if I was not satisfied with her work at the end of the period, I was frankly to tell her so, and also that if she was not satisfied she was to so advise me.

That lady was Mrs. Jane S. McKimmon who took over at that time and from then on became the outstanding leader of home demonstration work in North Carolina, and certainly during her lifetime no one in the United States exceeded her contribution. I think that the greatest contribution I have ever made to Extension work in North Carolina was getting Mrs. McKimmon started in that work.

There were a number of counties in the work in 1912, and at the fair that fall there was a booth exhibiting the products produced by the Girls’ Canning Club members. Already they had progressed beyond the mere canning stage for there were exhibits of pickle, catsup, canning in glass, canning in tin, and a number of other products. Occasionally you would hear a minor explosion in the exhibit for the canning art had not yet progressed to the point, at least for home canning, where all of the products were safely processed.

There was one rather amusing incident in connection with the fair exhibit. Mrs. McKimmon was not on the payroll, but her enthusiasm was already in the work so she stayed with the exhibit practically all of the time and took great pride in telling the fair visitors all about it. One day I observed her talking with a gentleman and she was talking not only verbally but with her hands and her whole personality. The conversation lasted for some time and when the visitor had gone, I asked Mrs. McKimmon if she knew who he was. She said that she did not, but that he certainly could ask lots of questions. I had met him before and knew that it was Dr. Wallace Butrick of the General Education Board in New York, the agency that was financing all of this work. Mrs. McKimmon was somewhat embarrassed but the incident did not dampen her enthusiasm and I am confident that Dr. Butrick left that exhibit with more confidence as to the future than we had had up to that time. He probably did not hear the bottles and jars popping from time to time.

The growing of the canning of tomatoes led almost immediately into other products. The soup mixture was one of the first, and this of course required vegetables. And very shortly some of the girls started in poultry work. All of this led to marketing, for one of the first objectives was to sell part of the product so as to increase the family income. Many problems had to be overcome. It was learned early that if you are going to sell, then you must have a standardized product. There were many problems, but in the long run these were solved, and the work expanded by leaps and bounds. From a very few girls in 1910, the number grew to some 4,000 in 1911, and about 11,000 in 1912, and more than 20,000 by 1913 throughout the southern states.

A Virginia agent, in one of her field reports, made a statement that exemplifies the significance of the work. It was as follows: “After all, this canning club work means that we are to get a girl to do something worthwhile, to have it approved by those she loves, and then lead on to greater things.”

"Feed a Fighter" Program to Win War, 1944

“Carolina Farm Comment” by F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Wilmington Star, March 6, 1944

The battle of Stalingrad stands as one of the great, critical battles of history. It will rank perhaps along with Gettysburg or Waterloo or Kings Mountain or one of those other desperate struggles on which hinged the fate of nations and people. A Russian general who fought at Stalingrad was in the United States recently and he made some interesting observations about the battle. Among them, he said that the Germans in their desperate retreat abandoned huge stores of munitions of all kinds. They left behind great fields of tanks and trucks and enormous supplies of oil and equipment—but they never abandoned food.

This general observed with great clarity the decision of those ruthless leaders who have built one of the greatest fighting machines the world has ever seen. He had seen one of the greatest demonstrations in all history of the force and value of arms and yet he noted that the Germans were ready to abandon everything but food. Not only did they take their own food supplies with them but, as usual, they ravaged the countryside of its entire food supply that those left free from their slavery might suffer from malnutrition.

That’s the German way. They learned from World War I about food because that war left its mark on the young Prussians who were needed by the generals for another war. The Germans regard food as a weapon of war. They withhold it to have their commands obeyed and they supply it to reward their quislings. For the use of their own people they steal every ounce that the conquered countries can produce above a starvation level. Waste of food is not forgiven. Therefore, I was greatly interested in some remarks made by Marvin Jones, federal food administrator, the other day in telling about a dinner party in a mid-west state. There were 81 persons at the tables and when they had scraped all the edible food form the different plates and weighed it, it added up to exactly 17 pounds wasted by the 81 persons at that one dinner. That was abandoned food, Judge Jones said.

“We have always abandoned some food in America,” he added. “Historically, we have been so blessed among the peoples of the earth with such an abundance of food that we have naturally become somewhat careless and wasteful. We have collected figures recently throughout the nation and have found that we have been actually wasting at least 20 percent of all the food produced in this country.”

If Judge Jones is correct, as we must presume that he is, then we waste one pound of food out of every five that we produce. This is said to be enough to feed the combined populations of Greece, Czechoslovakia, Norway and Belgium. At the various colleges where young men are being trained for the various branches of the armed forces, the Experiment Stations have been making a study of food waste and nutrition. So far, these studies indicate in 37 colleges where the studies have been made that from one-half to two-thirds of a pound of food per student per day is being wasted. No wonder the 4-H Club leaders of America are calling upon the young farm people to produce more food. L.R. Harrill, club leader in North Carolina, has figured out that more than 24 million meals a day are needed to feed the men in armed forces. He says that every farm boy and girl of club age, from 10 to 20, should join in the 4-H Club plan of feeding a fighter this year.

It should be kept in mind that a large portion of the men in the army came from the farms. They have been accustomed to eating rather full meals and they gripe when they do not get the kind of food they want. Now that so many of them have gone from the farm, the boys and girls of club age are about all that are left to handle this job of food production. The week of March 4 to 12 has been set aside as club mobilization week and during that period Mr. Harrill is asking that every one stress the importance of the young people joining in 4-H Club work so that they might go about this job of food production in a methodical and definite way. 

One of the principal projects of the work this year will be “Feed a Fighter.” Hundreds of young people enlisted in this project last year and turned in splendid jobs of production. They were rewarded with free trips to nearby army posts and installations that they might see how the soldiers are fed and trained. The army was delighted to have these guests because our soldiers, like those of Germany and Russia, know also that food is a weapon of war.

Food production is going to be a hard job in North Carolina in 1944. Few general farms can … the 16 units demanded by the officials in charge of selective service. If then, additional men are taken from the farms, this will cut more deeply into the available supply of men left to grow food. The young 4-H club members will therefore face a greater responsibility than ever. Last year 92,000 of them did a great job. This year, there should be over 150,000 enlisted in the “Feed a Fighter” program. Here are some of the units of production which have been set up as being necessary to feed a soldier for one year: 1,300 pounds of meat produced by 2 baby beef animals, 6 pigs or 16 lambs, 300 broilers to weigh 1 ½ pounds each, 50 hens that will produce 450 dozen eggs, feed and care for one cow that will provide 5,500 pounds of milk, grow 113 bushels of corn or 110 bushels of tomatoes or 135 bushels of Iris potatoes, and produce 270 gallons of syrup, grow one acre of mixed vegetable, and can 500 quarts of vegetables. Those who do one or more of these things on each farm in the state may not see their food being sent directly oversees to the boy fighting on the battlefront, but, at least, this food when produced on ever farm will release other food to be sent from the great central markets of the nation. At the same time, we shall continue to have food and to spare here at home.

Patterson Grange, 1935

March, 1935, issue of the Carolina Co-Operator (formerly The Carolina Cotton Grower)

Patterson Grange Number 616 was among the first to be organized in the state. We are located 10 miles west of Salisbury in Rowan County. We have a nice hall which was enlarged and painted last year. We not only have one of the largest in the state. We have been represented at each state meeting, and we have nine Seventh Degree members.

We meet every Saturday night. On the second Saturday night in each month we have an open meeting known as a “community meeting.” At this meeting we have programs that are both educational and recreational.

Our Grange also owns and operates a small store which is a great help to our members. We have a degree team that has done quite a bit of work in the county, putting on the third degree principally.

Patterson Grange, 1935

March, 1935, issue of the Carolina Co-Operator (formerly The Carolina Cotton Grower)

Patterson Grange Number 616 was among the first to be organized in the state. We are located 10 miles west of Salisbury in Rowan County. We have a nice hall which was enlarged and painted last year. We not only have one of the largest in the state. We have been represented at each state meeting and we have nine Seventh Degree members.

We meet every Saturday night. On the second Saturday night in each month we have an open meeting known as a “community meeting.” At this meeting we have programs that are both educational and recreational.

Our Grange also owns and operates a small store which is a great help to our members. We have a degree team that has done quite a bit of work in the county, putting on the third degree principally.

Joe Went To College—So Can You, 1941

From the March 1941 issue of The Southern Planter

Four years ago Joe Sanderson bought two pigs. Four years hence, if his plans materialize, he will graduate with a B.S. degree in Agriculture from the North Carolina State College. Those four years dealing with pigs and the 4-H Club work have paved the way.

Here is how it happened. Those first two pigs bought in 1937 at a cost of $27 netted only experience, but determination would not be denied. Two registered Spotted Poland-China gilts and one small male, at a cost of $80 when fed and cared for the 4-H way produced 13 pigs in 1938. In addition, Joe bought seven feeder pigs and conducted a feeding demonstration. From the two projects, he made a net profit of $394.

Joe started 1939 with one boar, two sows and one gilt. He raised 71 hogs. Soybeans and lespedza were grown for pasture, and the hogs fed by a self-feeder. October 5^th found Joe and 21 of his hogs at the State Fair, winning $101 in prizes. In 1940 he raised 84 head of hogs, again exhibiting at the State Fair and winning $89 with 23 animals.

During his four years Joe spent $1,465.87 on his pig club project with a gross income of $2,973.87, leaving a net profit of $1,508.

Joe soon learned that a balanced system of farming pays best. In 1937, he produced 106.6 bushels of corn on his club acre, making a profit of $44.94. In 1938 with seed, field selected from the 1937 crop, he produced 137.5 bushels on an acre, making a profit of $66.20. In 1939 he produced 72.1 bushels, making a profit of $28.46. In 1040, by following good cultural practices and wise marketing, he produced $77.05 worth of sweet potatoes, making a profit of $55.60 from is first sweet potato project. The baby beef project made him a net of $38.56, making a gross income of $3,409.81 over the four-year period.

Joe won six championship ribbons, 18 blue ribbons, six red ribbons, and 13 white ribbons with his pigs at the State Fair. What is even more important, he won a gold watch and a state champion livestock certificate, a one year scholarship to the North Carolina State College and a State Champion corn club certificate.

Joe has participated in county, state and district judging contests, has served as music director and reporter for his local club. “During my four years in club work,” said Joe, “I have learned many things about farming. I have learned that balanced farming is profitable, that one must raise not only corn and potatoes but livestock also to consume the farm products. The years I have been enrolled in 4-H Club work have been well spent. I only hope that my future years will be as much pleasure to me as the years I have been a 4-H member.”

America is still a land of opportunity for ambitious farm youth!

Keep Those Victory Gardens Growing, 1945

“Carolina Farm Comment” by F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Wilmington Star, March 5, 1945

The year 1945 will long be remembered in the homes of America. This is a trite thing to say when my two boys and your boys, and your sweetheart, and hour husband, or perhaps your father are in the armed forces and you pray every day that they shall do their duty and come through unscathed by hurts of war. We shall remember the year 1945 because of them, of course, but if we are not very careful we shall also remember this year because of the food situation. 

Information from Washington is to the effect that the army will step up its buying and that many of the foods which are now critical with us will be bought in larger quantities than ever. We saw that this week in the higher point values going on fats and cooking oils. There seems to be a fear that once Germany collapses, if she does, the peole of the United States will let down in the war effort and will not push things hard enough for us to have the supplies with which to whip Japan into submission. That sounds like good logic but it means that civilians are going to feel the good pinch.

At the risk of being repetitious, therefore, I am going to ask every reader of this column to do something about it. In other words, if you live in town and have a garden spot, please plant a garden and look after it all the year. If you are on the farm, please have a family-sized garden in which you can grow all the fresh vegetables your family will need for fresh use and for canning. If you are selling off your brood sows because of the high price of feedstuffs, please save at least enough of these to provide pigs for your home supply of meat and a little to sell to your town neighbors who know nothing about raising hogs. If you do not have the feed supplies for your dairy cattle or for your beef animals or sheep or poultry, please begin to plan right now about the feed you can grow and see that it is planted, grown, and harvested.

It is not becoming in an agricultural worker perhaps to attempt being a prophet. No one can read the future, but, certainly one can see what the trend is, and despite the lack of labor and the hardships which farmers will have to put up with in 1945, they must look after their home supplies of food and feed. Louis Broomfield said in 1943, I believe it was, that we would approach famine conditions by the summer of that year. He didn’t know what he was talking about because the farmers of America broke all records for food production up to that time and then went on to break them again in 1944. But they had good seasons. So far in this year, we have had no serious droughts, nor any great insect or disease outbreaks to affect our production of food and feed crops. “This has been true now for seven straight, successive years. It is simply too good to last. We may be in for the seven poor years of Joseph’s day. It could not be as serious with us as it was with ancient Egypt because we have a greater diversity of soils and climate over this nation and are not dependent solely upon rains at the upper reaches of a river.

But we could be hurt and hurt badly if something happened to the normal food supplies of the nation. North Carolina should never want for anything. From the seashore of Wilmington to the tops of the mountains, we have soils, climate, rainfall in such variance that some groups, somewhere, will have good crops. We can grow anything that can be grown anywhere else in the nation and then something more. Our orators have told us that time and time again. The ting we must do, however, to think through the situation as it might affect our own, individual farms and then make our plans to that we shall not want on any farm. Then we also have an obligation towards the family in town that normally busy the surplus that we produce. Society is so divided that some of us make our living on the farm from the land, while others make their living manufacturing or trading in the things which we need or in handling the things which we produce. We, therefore, have a responsibility to see that these persons do not suffer from a lack of nutritious food.

We can increase our production of corn this year by using good seed, by fertilizing with more nitrogen, and by better cultivation. We have better pastures for our livestock because we have used ground limestone and phosphates upon them and they will turn out more gallons of milk, more pounds of beef, and more eggs and broilers. Victory Gardens are off to a good start in some states to the south of us. In some of the states, governors have issued proclamations urging all citizens to plant gardens and to husband the surplus. Reports from all parts of North Carolina indicate that we shall have as many home gardens this year as we had last year. This is good as far as it goes; but, the fact remains that we did not have many gardens last year as we should have had.  The town people fell down on this job a little and if they are wise, they will remedy the situation in 1945.

And just this one other word about food supplies. We are going to need all kinds of foods. Meat will be almost impossible to get later on. If we are to be properly fed, we must have fresh vegetables, peas, beans, and other vegetable high in protein. Then, too, there is a place for more small fruits and berries. North Carolina is a natural berry state. The old-fashioned gardens of the past years always contained small fruits and berries. They added much to the diet. They sharpened the appetite. They made delicious refreshments for those who came to see us. Let’s begin to grow more of them and thus better enjoy the other homegrown food that we shall have on hand.

Remembering Rags

“Ragtime” by Florence Oliver in The Precious Past: Reminiscences of the Way Life Used to Be, recollections by Home Demonstration Club members of Washington County, published in November 1992

The present generation is used to the convenience of something ready made available for every phase of housekeeping and cleaning, especially the many products of paper and plastic. Maybe they wonder how we managed before these products were available.

I was born in 1913, so I came through ragtime. Rags increased steadily: underwear, nightgowns, pajamas, shirts, sheets, dish towels, bath towels and wash cloths wore out. When fabric had holes or became thin, faded or frayed, we ripped it into rags. This is our oldest form of recycling.

Sometimes we erred and made instant rags. A repairman grabbed whatever was at hand to dab at a mess. He would snatch a terry cloth towel in the latest color or the dazzling new white dish cloth to catch dribbles of grease or dirty water. A prudent housekeeper would anticipate this need and offer a supply of rags at the outset making sure to remove the good towels. A prudent repairman might arrive equipped with rags of his own. But many of us did not plan ahead, and the new towels became the rags that we forgot to use for the next repairs.

Another batch of instant rags was generated by people who were going to do “just a little painting.” They planned to be neat, but errant drops of green, white, or brown paint inevitably spoiled their jeans, sweatshirts, or socks. These garments were then relegated to a pile of paint clothes that would be worn for major paint jobs if they could be found when needed or if they still fit.

Rags came and went, but there is one kind that I miss—diapers reincarnated as premium quality multi-use rags, which disappeared when the last of the diaper wearers graduated to underwear. Users of the disposable diapers do not know what wonders these soft old cloths were for polishing silver and waxing furniture. By the time our former diaper wearers entered high school, their diapers had become mere threads—two wispy and thin for any more work. Their passing left a void in the rag supply.

Fifty years ago, used cloth was not so quickly relegated to the ragbin. Table napkins were made from the best parts of table cloths. Everyday handkerchiefs were made from the sides of sheets. As fabrics aged, they were often promoted to new and grander purposes. Strong hands snipped old suits, coats, ties, and stockings into strips that were then braided into handsome rugs. Deft needle workers sewed patchwork quilts from the salvageable sections of old dresses. These beautiful, durable products often lived a second useful life, much longer than the first. Some old quilts still eluded the ragbag, for as valued antiques they are used as wall hangings.

Cotton feedbags, both white and printed, were used for making aprons, smocks, kitchen curtains, pillow cases, and even our everyday dresses, if there were two or more of the same design. They wore well. Cotton flour bags, finely woven and soft, made the best dish towels. I still have a bridge table cloth and four napkins made from white feed bags. The hems and a corner design were hand hemstitched. This set won a blue ribbon at the State Fair.

Burlap bags, just folded, were used for foot mats. We were taught to cut strips and gather them into a double ruffle. The ruffle was sewn by hand with a peanut needle and twine string to a flat burlap bag. This made a nice fluffy door mat.

Especially during the depression years, anything was used. For years the boll weevil, a small grayish beetle whose larvae do damage to cotton bolls, made cotton no longer profitable to plant.

Rayons, nylons, polyester, and cotton blends gradually replaced cotton. These new fabrics changed the clothes we wore and the way they were washed. We could no longer boil clothes with homemadelye soap in an iron washpot.

Home Demonstration Agents taught us how to care for these new materials and suggested detergents to use. Needless to say, cotton rags were no longer plentiful. Lots of mending has been done; both patching and darning, to preserve the rags.

Certain common rags should be reserved for the tasks for which they are best suited. Old sheets, pillow cases, and dish towels are unsurpassed for cleaning windows, the older and softer the better. The most excellent dust rags are from underwear and flannel clothing. Frayed bath towels are prized for laying sweaters out to dry, mopping large water spills, blotting wet spots on carpets, and especially useful for washing and drying cars.

A rainy day is a good time for sorting rags and labeling boxes and the shelves where they are stored. This activity should not be scorned as a waste of time. It should be noted that there are triple benefits from a task that allows one to reorganize, ruminate, and reminisce all at the same time. Now everyone in the family can find the right rag for every job and no question need be asked. Launder, dry, fold, and reshelve the rags until they are no longer useable.

We had Ragtime music, too—a type of American music, an early form of jazz first popular, according to Webster, from about 1890 to 1915, characterized by strong syncopation in fast even time and rhythm. To sing or hum along, tunes added amusement to a task.

I am a dedicated recycler of cloth.

   --Florence Oliver