The Great Depression

This photograph depicts a home demonstration by Mrs. Jonathan Danson in Duplin County, North Carolina. Mrs. Jonathan Danson educated rural women on the nutritional benefits of milk.

Extension agents distributed images such as this during the Great Depression to draw attention to problems of malnutrition plaguing rural families across the country.

Low family incomes and insufficient food supply caused the Extension Service to suffer during the Great Depression. Parents sent children back into family fields, and 4-H membership was at a low. The New Deal provided much of the relief for rural families.

One of the greatest successes of the Extension Service during the depression was perhaps unintended. The Extension Service had created well-organized communities that enabled women to get together and develop their own relief initiatives. Many counties suspended Extension agents in the early 1930s, but women especially took the initiative to continue club work. For example, in some counties, home demonstration club members collected and made bed linens, clothing, and other home necessities that were loaned to fellow community members in need.[1]

Home demonstration clubs throughout North Carolina so easily mobilized that state and national leaders relied on club members to run them. The governor created an Office of Relief which demonstration club members made up the bulk of the volunteers. The volunteers or “visiting homemakers” went to families in need, helped with daily chores, and educated families on food preparation, preservation, and diet. The volunteers were so successful that eventually the program merged with the Federal Administration of Relief and the women received small stipends.[2] One government project, supported by the Agriculture Adjustment Administration, the Extension Service, and the Surplus Commodity Administration enabled low-income families to receive mattresses made with the South’s surplus cotton supply. Eventually home demonstration programs took over the project and club members and their husbands dedicated time to make mattresses.[3]

During the Great Depression, it was not the Extension Service that proved successful, but the women they had organized in previous years who led relief efforts in North Carolina.