Canning Clubs Get Underway

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With boys' corn clubs successfully under way, it was inevitable that the Washington office should sponsor a program for girls.

By 1910 O. B. Martin was hearing from all over the South – demands that girls' work be federally sponsored as the corn clubs were. Programs for girls were not new. A number of states had successfully started girls' club work. The question was, how much of this should Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work at USDA put into its program for the South?

Seaman Knapp was never in favor of scattering one's effort over so wide a program that none of it made an impression. His idea was to begin by doing one thing, and doing it so well that the program would sell itself. In the boys' program he had started with one crop – corn. The same method should be adopted for girls. Ideas were discussed with various states during the fall of 1909 and out of these discussions came the idea of having girls grow and can one vegetable – the tomato.

The tomato was selected because it was universally grown and appreciated. It wasn't too difficult to get a good crop. It was acid and therefore easy to can without danger of excessive spoilage. Each girl should be asked to plant a plot large enough to provide tomatoes not only for family use, but for sale. The plot agreed upon was a tenth of an acre.

During the Christmas holidays of 1909, Martin outlines these ideas tentatively to the school teachers assembled at the annual state educational association meeting in Columbia, South Carolina. The teachers listened with interest, but only one of them caught the vision and put the plan into practice. Miss Marie S. Cromer, a country school teacher from Aiken county, went home and spent her Saturdays writing letters to girls, enlisting them in the project. When spring came, 46 volunteers were setting out their tenth-acre plots in accordance with instructions from the Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile another state, knowing that a domestic science program was in the wind, was making preparations for 1910. In Richmond, Virginia, the alert Dr. J. D. Eggleston, state superintendent of public instruction, asked the state demonstration agent, T. O. Sandy, where he could find a capable woman to develop such a program for rural schools. Sandy recommended Ella G. Agnew, a remarkable young Virginia woman currently working for the YWCA in Toledo. Eggleston wrote her that if she would like to do something for rural girls there was a place for her in her home state. Miss Agnew arrived in Richmond on February 1, 1910. Although she was put to work organizing cooking classes, they told her they had "something else" for her to do later. That "something else" became apparent on May 31, when Miss Agnew was called to the state capitol to meet with Dr. Knapp, Governor William H. Mann, and various other officials and legislators. There, Miss Agnew learned that she was to teach country girls to grow and can tomatoes. Knapp crisply outlined her duties: She was to begin with only two counties, organize small manageable groups, and concentrate on tomatoes. Her title was to be "State Agent of Girls' Tomato Clubs." In Washington, Knapp had trouble persuading the Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson, to appoint a woman as field representative of the department. There was no precedent for it. Field representatives were men. All the agents for Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work were men. Knapp's ideas prevailed, however, and on June 3, 1910, Ella Agnew received her appointment as the Department's "State Agent of Girls' Tomato Clubs – the first home demonstration agent ever appointed by the Department of Agriculture.

While Virginia was laying the groundwork for home demonstration, the tomatoes in the plots of Miss Cromer's school girls were getting ripe down in Aiken county, South Carolina, and it was up to Knapp's office to do something about it. The Department mailed each of Miss Cromer's girls letters, instructional leaflets, and farmers' bulletins. By July, the tomatoes were becoming full and red, and it was time to go ahead with the next step in the program – canning. The task fell to O. B. Martin, since the experiment was taking place in his home state. The task was complicated by the fact that a public-spirited woman had financed Miss Cromer to a summer of domestic science study in New England and the young teacher had departed for the North. Thus, the first experiments in canning had to be conducted without the services of the woman who led the club. A meeting of the tomato club was called at Aiken on July 16. A big canning outfit, shipped from Illinois, was set up on the courthouse lawn. Since Martin knew next to nothing about canning, he had Miss Carrie Hyde, home economics teacher of Winthrop College, take charge of actual operations. Miss Hyde, however, knew little about canning in tin. The powers-that-be had decided to teach canning in tin because girls were going to sell their surplus, and housewives were used to buying tins rather than glass jars. To help Miss Hyde with this phase of the work, Martin rounded up a tinner, and for good measure had a plumber and carpenter standing by. The scene on the Aiken courthouse lawn was an historic one, forerunner of many more such scenes to take place in the next few years. There were long tables at which women worked blanching and peeling tomatoes. Clustered about their baskets filled with red fruit, were some 25 girls. Off to one side was the canner, "as large as a two-horse wagon body," with smoke pouring from the stack. There were eager parents watching and helping, and idle onlookers wondering what crazy idea the government was up to now. The canning bee ran three days and the crowds got larger each day. Enthusiasm for the canning demonstration was running high. Other communities in the county wanted to have sessions, so it was planned to move the canning outfit around the county, giving every girl a chance to put up her produce. That first session at Aiken in July, 1910, produced a champion. One 14-year old girl named Katie Gunter came in every day, driving the two miles in a buggy, bringing in basket after basket of ripe tomatoes, all the products of her tenth-acre plot. When her pack was finished and counted, it was found that she had 512 No. 3 cans of tomatoes. She was declared county champion and later the state legislature recognized her achievement by passing an act giving her a scholarship at Winthrop College. [Later that same year, Jerry Moore, the corn champion, was to be similarly honored with a college scholarship.]

The Aiken county canners had provided themselves with artistic labels bearing a picture of a tomato and the words: "South Carolina Tomatoes." On the other side were the words: "Grown and Packed by the Aiken County Girls' Tomato Club."

When Marie Cromer returned to Aiken county from New England, she received an appointment as an agent of the Department of Agriculture on August 16, 1910, 10 weeks after the appointment of Miss Agnew in Virginia. There is a historical marker in Abbeville, South Carolina in honor of Marie (Cromer) Seigler as "founder of a girls' tomato club, the first of many such clubs nationwide."

Marie Cromer, who started the first girls' tomato club, and Ella Agnew, the first home demonstration agent ever appointed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are truly two remarkable pioneers. (taken from The 4-H Story by Franklin Reck)