University of Virginia Library

Leadership of the Agricultural Agencies

Among the first to have conceived the association of farmers and
trained agriculturists was Thomas Jefferson, as Claude R. Wickard,
Secretary of Agriculture, pointed out in an address on “Thomas
Jefferson, Founder of Modern American Agriculture” at the University
of Virginia on Founder's Day, April 13, 1944. Jefferson
was an advocate of the family-size farm which remained predominant
in the county throughout the war years. He favored abolition
of primogeniture and entail and held democratic views regarding the
disposition of the public domain. In his practice of soil conservation
at Monticello, of contour ploughing, rotation of crops, and preservation
of soil fertility, he was a forerunner of modern programs for
soil conservation. His work toward the exchange of ideas through

the Agricultural Society of Albemarle County promoted agricultural
research and led to the later development of the Extension Service.
His firm belief in the value of educational institutions and the need
of applying science to agriculture influenced the establishment of land
grant colleges. Indeed, American agriculture as it is practiced in the
twentieth century has evolved from these early conceptions and in
accordance with the principles of the great liberal thinker to whom
this region of Virginia and the world at large owe so much.[7]

Several active and cooperative agencies, whose programs were intensified
under the pressure of war, furnished scientific information
and aid to local farmers.

The Thomas Jefferson Soil Conservation District, organized in
1939, included Albemarle, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa, and Nelson
counties. In taking this name for their district Albemarle farmers
were not so much going back to Jefferson as, to quote Henry A.
Wallace's apt phrase, “catching up to Jefferson.” Officers and members
of the technical staff were all employees of the Department of
Agriculture who worked with advisory planning boards composed
of sixty county farmers and agricultural agents. John A. Smart was
conservationist for the district, Earl H. Brunger was soil scientist,
E. L. Bradley of Scottsville was district supervisor for Albemarle,
Robert O. Anderson was soil conservationist for Albemarle, and William
R. White was conservation aid. Conservation experiments
begun in the Ivy Creek watershed in the early thirties came under the
supervision of the Department of Agriculture in 1935. This work,
in addition to that done more recently by the Thomas Jefferson Soil
Conservation District, laid foundations for increased production during
the war.[8]

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration continued its prewar
function of assisting farmers to produce the needed commodities
in the desired quantities at the right time. Those farmers who complied
with acreage allotments and endeavored to conserve their soil
received agricultural conservation payments. Production goals, marketing
quotas, and acreage allotments were submitted to individual
farmers, who were free to declare their intentions to conform or not,
as they chose. For each of the eighteen communities into which
Albemarle was divided, there were five A. A. A. committeemen elected
by their neighbors, and each committee was headed by a chairman.
The county A. A. A. chairman became chairman of the United States
Department of Agriculture Defense Board for Albemarle County,
later known as the County War Board, organized at the beginning
of the war. In Albemarle County Larned D. Randolph was chairman
in 1942 and 1943, Arthur W. Talcott in 1944, and H. T.
Wiley in 1945. H. J. Crenshaw served as secretary during the whole
period.[9]

The Farm Security Administration continued, as before the war,

to help small farmers improve their productive ability. Through
supervision and aid in farm management this agency sought to enable
farmers to be self-sustaining. Loans averaging $500 permitted many
farm families with low incomes to buy tools, seed, cows, hogs, and
chickens. F. S. A. cooperated with the Emergency Feed and Seed
Loan Office in Culpeper, a branch of the Farm Credit Administration.
Carlyle Crigler and Ina Glick were F. S. A. supervisors for
Albemarle County throughout the war.[10]

Vocational agriculture teachers of the public school system trained
many young boys and girls for farm work. From the session of
1939–1940 through 1945–1946, under the direction of R. Claude
Graham, superintendent of Albemarle County schools, 695 white
pupils and 523 Negro students were taught various agricultural techniques,
including how to repair farm machinery.

The United States Department of Agriculture's cooperative Extension
Service is the farm and home teaching arm of the Department
of Agriculture and land grant colleges. Before the war its role was
to spread to rural families information concerning most recently
approved agricultural methods and projects recommended by the state
agricultural colleges—in Virginia, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute
at Blacksburg. During the war its leaders informed rural families
on such subjects as Victory Gardens and how to grow them, the
nutritive value of various foods, the materials needed for the salvage
program, the dangers of inflation, methods of fire protection, the
necessity of buying war bonds and stamps, and similar war problems.
They also corrected rumors, made local inventories of food
and feed, and gathered other information for victory. Albemarle
County was among the first counties in Virginia to organize both
Home Demonstration and 4-H Clubs, sponsored by the Extension
Service. In 1942 Albemarle had seventeen Home Demonstration
Clubs with a membership of 800 women; its nineteen 4-H Clubs
reached a peak membership in 1943 of 1,134 members.[11]

Many duties which arose from wartime needs were assumed by
the staff of the Extension Service in Albemarle County. It consisted
of T. O. Scott, county agent since 1927, Mrs. Bessie Dunn
Miller, Home Demonstration agent, 1917–1943, Mrs. Ruth Burruss
Huff, assistant Home Demonstration agent, 1919–1943, H. M.
Brumback, assistant county agent, Conley G. Greer, local farm agent
since 1918, Miss Bessie Jones, secretary since 1927, and Miss Jeanne
Fournier, assistant secretary.

The quality of the late Mrs. Bessie Dunn Miller's work and her
character have been commemorated in the establishment of the Bessie
Dunn Miller Center for Cancer Prevention, which was founded in
1945 through the joint efforts of the Albemarle Home Demonstration
Committee, headed by the late Mrs. C. Nelson Beck, the University
of Virginia Hospital, and the Albemarle County Medical

Society. Upon Mrs. Miller's death late in 1943, Mrs. Huff succeeded
her as Home Demonstration agent.

Under Mrs. Huff's direction hundreds of children were influenced
to become interested in making their homes liveable and in fulfilling
the duties of citizenship. A notable result of 4-H Club leadership
was the fact that during the war juvenile delinquency was not evident
among its members. Through Mrs. Huff's initiative the 4-H
Club County Camp, the first of its kind in Virginia, was established
in 1941 with the aid of the late Dr. L. G. Roberts, chairman of the
Board of Supervisors, County Executive Henry A. Haden, and a
contribution of $1,000 from the Albemarle Terracing Association.
Classes taught in the camp centered around wartime needs and included
First Aid, avoidance of food waste, canning, soil conservation,
gardening, storage of root crops, and forestry. The assistant Home
Demonstration agent in 1944 and 1945 was Miss Isabelle Price.
In addition to her regular work as secretary to the Extension staff,
Miss Jones's activities during the war included procuring gardening
information for rural families, collecting foods for the canning center,
distributing information about methods of conserving foods,
assisting hundreds of county residents in filling out applications for
gasoline and sugar rations, helping to secure labor to harvest crops,
and obtaining permits for construction of buildings on farm property.[12]

Conducting the program of the Extension Service to the individual
farm was the County Board of Agriculture, composed of ninety members
who included the county agent and his assistant, Home Demonstration
agents, the chairman and co-chairman of each of the fifteen
communities into which the county was for this purpose divided,
and officials of various farm organizations. Women were admitted
to the County Board of Agriculture for the first time in 1942 when
the Home Demonstration Clubs began to be represented. In connection
with Extension Service volunteer leader work, the county
was divided into eighty-two neighborhoods of ten to fifteen families
each.

Supplementing the peacetime machinery of the County Board of
Agriculture, the County War Board was created to handle such special
problems as rationing of farm machinery, investigations for farm
labor deferments, and coordination of the work of the various Federal
and state organizations represented in Albemarle. It consisted
of representatives from the Soil Conservation Service, Virginia State
Forestry Service, Farm Security Administration, Farm Credit Administration,
and the Extension Service. Its chairman was the county
chairman of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. First
known as a Defense Board, it began to function in July, 1941. It
was disbanded in 1946 after Selective Service was discontinued.[13]