Public Relations Ploy Sways American Banking Executives

Perma-Link » http://4-HHistory.com/?ps=69

In the spring of 1923, the tiny National Committee on Boys and Girls Club Work, still only in its second year of existence, was busy bringing club work to the attention of business groups as one of the year's main objectives. According to Reck's "The 4-H Story," Guy Noble, as director, pulled off one of the most dramatic bits of public relations work with the American Bankers' Association. Already Noble had interested J. H. Puelicher, Milwaukee banker and then president of the ABA, a self-made man who had made his first money getting up at five o'clock in the morning to clerk in a store, and had a soft spot in his heart for the farm boy who understood early rising and manual labor.

Noble arranged with two state leaders to have 4-H members give club demonstrations before the executive council of the ABA in order to let the bankers see with their own eyes what club work was all about. The event took place at the swank Rye-Biltmore Country Club in the metropolitan suburb of Rye, New York. About 300 banking executives were present. To this august meeting Miss. Elsie Trabue, assistant state club leader in Connecticut, brought a team of two girls – Marion Eggleston and Elizabeth Perkins. As they rode into the grounds, their taxi driver asked them dubiously, "Front or rear door?"

The girls went in the front door, and in the large lounge with its velour drapes and paneled walls, the young ladies went to work cutting up chicken and canning it over an oil stove.

Nobody left the hall. This was a floor show with a different touch. The bankers looked on, fascinated. One of them was over-heard murmuring, "My daughter is getting a fancy education at Vassar but, you know, I'd like to think that somewhere along the line she would get some of this kind of education."

Two young Pennsylvania club boys, selected by A. L. Barker, state club leader, introduced the bankers to the masculine side of club work. On the immaculately tailored and landscaped grounds of the Rye-Biltmore, they stood beside a purebred Ayrshire calf. After the manner of demonstrations, one club member introduced himself and his partner, then told in confident tones how he had bought the calf at what seemed to his neighbors an extravagant price, but how the calf's mother had set a milk record, with the result that the young owner had already been offered three times the purchase price of the calf.

After giving his simple tale of the profitableness of good stock, he yielded the floor to his partner, who proceeded to tell his audience what points of conformation and temperament to look for in a milk cow.

To dramatize club work further, Noble had worked up beautifully done charts – one of them patterned after a bank statement – showing the activities and profits of club work.

Following the Rye-Biltmore demonstrations, the ABA endorsed club work as its top agricultural project and later, when the Capper-Ketcham bill was before Congress, gave its unqualified support to the legislation.