University of Virginia Library

VII
Producing Food and Fiber

Food for combatant armies has ever been one of the requisites of
war. Famous generals from Alexander the Great to Eisenhower
have attested to this fact. During the Second World War production
of food proved to be more indispensable than ever before. This
circumstance was attributable directly to practices to which Germany
and Japan resorted. In Europe, for example, the Germans planned
and carried out a scientific system of looting the countries they invaded.
Not only did invading German armies appropriate harvested
crops and livestock for their own consumption: carloads of agricultural
produce and farm animals were also sent into Germany for
civilian consumption. Every precaution was taken to divest the
farmers in conquered countries of seeds for sowing new crops and
to deprive them of grain for feeding what livestock remained. German
dieticians calculated meticulously what would constitute a subnormal
diet for their conquered neighbors, thereby guaranteeing their
ultimate debilitation. Throughout the years of the war these peoples
were undernourished, while Germany lived on the fat of their
lands.

Untouched by enemy incursions, the United States was fortunate
in that its land was neither invaded nor plundered. American farmers
were left free to pursue the cultivation of their fields unmolested.
They became aware of the importance of the task which was to be
theirs in the struggle against Germany, Italy, and Japan. Not all
but many of them soon recognized that the goals for increased food
production set forth by the Federal government were fully justified,
though its proposals seemed staggering. Many farmers understood
that food must be raised for their sons overseas; that the people at
home, active in producing the materials of war, required adequate
nourishment; that the allies engaged in fighting off invading armies
or air forces were in need of a supplement to their rapidly diminishing
food supplies; and that whole populations in conquered countries,
people who were most cruelly affected by the lack of food,
were in dire need of any relief which could be gotten to them. In
fact, the American farmer found it necessary to think in terms not
only of his own welfare but also of his community, his country, and

the world as a whole. He met the food crisis and produced what
was required.

Since agricultural interests had been predominant in Albemarle
County, the production of food for American consumption and for
shipment abroad to allied nations naturally occupied the 15,955 persons
who were living on its farms when this country was drawn
into the war. Although never disturbed by foreign invasion, the
production of food did not progress with uninterrupted smoothness
during the war. Shortages of labor and machinery, and price ceilings
which were in some instances restrictive, brought problems which
challenged patriotic effort as well as understanding of the unprecedented
production goals set by the Federal government. Various
divisions of the Department of Agriculture, together with additional
Federal and state agencies related to agriculture, worked to inform
the Albemarle farmer of his responsibilities to himself and to his
country. The city dwellers of Charlottesville and residents of the
towns of the county were encouraged from the spring of 1942 to
join Albemarle County farmers in producing food. Their Victory
Gardens brought into this phase of the war effort a large fraction
of the total population of the community.[1]

Food Production Goals

National goals for the production of food in 1942, the largest in
the history of American agriculture to that time, were nineteen per
cent higher than the 1935–1939 average. They provided for greatly
increased acreages of soybeans and peanuts to meet the shortage of
vegetable oil, which had previously been imported from the Philippines,
and they called for expansion in dairy products, livestock,
and vegetable crops. Albemarle County farmers were to produce
greater quantities of each of these last three types of food and were
to grow 270 acres of soybeans besides in 1942.[2]

Goals for 1943 represented a one per cent increase over 1942.
Greater quantities of livestock, cheese, skim milk, and vegetable crops
were needed for military consumption and shipment under Lend-Lease;
more peanuts and fewer soybeans were asked. Seventy-five
per cent of the year's food production was allocated to the civilian
population of the United States, thirteen per cent to the armed forces,
which numbered 7,000,000 at the beginning of 1943, ten per cent
to the allies through Lend-Lease, and two per cent to United States
territories. Albemarle County was to produce nine per cent more
milk, three and five-tenths per cent more eggs, one per cent more
sows to farrow, eighty-five per cent more soybeans (contrary to the
national pattern), and nine-tenths of one per cent more Irish potatoes.[3]

As labor on the farms grew scarcer and still further increases in
the production of food were necessary, the national goals for 1944

were directed toward better use of land; a higher production per acre
and per animal unit, rather than an increase in acreage, was sought.
Feed grains and forage crops were to be planted in greater quantities
than before; this meant more plantings of alfalfa, legumes, and corn
hybrids. Goals for the last year of the war were similar to those of
1944, with again an added increase.[4]

The beginning of the war found the majority of Albemarle farmers
practicing general farming for the cultivation of grains, hay, and
pasture crops for dairy herds and beef cattle, hogs, horses, poultry,
and sheep. The fruit growers held orchards which provided a substantial
portion of the county's agricultural income. Albemarle led
the counties of Virginia in peach production, and its annual average
crop of Carmens, Elbertas, and Georgia Belles was 170,000 bushels.
Several varieties of apples were grown, including Winesaps, Stark's
Delicious, Stayman Winesaps, and Albemarle Pippins. Scattered
throughout the county were several breeders of beef cattle raising
Herefords and Angus. In addition to the dairy farms in the county,
two of the larger dairy industries in the state, the Elliott Ice Company
and the Monticello Dairy, Incorporated, were located in Charlottesville.
About forty per cent of the county was in woodland,
a profitable source of forest products.[5]

The cooperation of the crop farmers, fruit growers, livestock raisers,
and dairymen in attaining the goals fixed for each of the war
years constitutes a remarkable record. “Is there any single industry
in the nation that increased production with similar restrictions and
less labor?”, asked T. O. Scott, county agent for the Extension
Service in Albemarle. When the men left for the armed services,
women assumed unaccustomed farm duties and were frequently seen
driving tractors in the fields of the county. Foreign and migratory
labor was employed. Trucks, combines, machinery, and tools were
shared generously. And trained agriculturists representing various
government agencies contributed their specialized knowledge of methods
for increasing production.[6]

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]

Albemarle Orchards and Farm Labor

The shortage of labor created by the war was a major problem
which beset the farmer. Even in the summer of 1942 it was necessary
to take steps for the provision of a sufficient number of workers
to harvest the crops. A movement to recruit school children was
started, and twenty-eight students from Charlottesville schools enrolled.
Chesley A. Haden of Crozet and others hired 500 workers
from Georgia and North Carolina to pick fruit. The Farm Security
Administration set up a labor camp on the Hunter Ballard property
for these laborers. Describing the 350 workers imported from
Georgia, Chesley A. Haden said: “Carson, a burly Negro, the leader
of the group, had a picturesque method of enforcing discipline. He
gathered them all round the dinner table, got out a yard long knife,
laid it beside him on the table, gave them orders, and they did not
shirk from that time until they left. It is my belief that our native
mountain labor is far more satisfactory for our labor camps than
any labor that we can get from the deep south, or that we can expect
to get through the Employment Service. We have been spoiled about
labor, for there is no doubt that the native mountaineer is far better
than any labor we can hope to get through the present set-up of the
government employment service.” On the whole, this labor camp
was considered a success, since it saved thousands of bushels of
peaches. Its presence, however, was not unaccompanied by problems.
Disease was one. Another was that many more trucks were
required to get the workers home than to bring them northward, as
they had accumulated a great many possessions while they were here.[14]

An exodus of men into the armed services or war industries so
depleted farm labor by 1943 that a cry of protest went up all over
the country. An Albemarle farmer, father of two boys in the Navy,
echoed this outcry in The Daily Progress when he commented,
“Observing our local conditions and press reports, we are headed
undoubtedly for short crops unless draft of farm help ceases immediately.”[15]
The Extension Service made a study of available labor
on Virginia farms and found that there was twenty per cent less than
in 1942. Through questionnaires sent to 2,000 Albemarle County
farms, H. M. Brumback found that 545 additional workers were
needed from January through March, 765 from April through June,
3,590 from July through September, and 1,960 from October
through December.

A County Farm Labor Committee was appointed by the County
War Board to coordinate the effort of local agencies in recruiting and
supplying farm labor needed in the county. Working together with
it to maintain the labor supply were the Extension Service, the local
United States Employment Service office, the Farm Security Administration,
the county and city superintendents of schools, the Lions

Club farm labor and Kiwanis Club agriculture committees appointed
at the request of the Central Virginia Planning Commission, and the
Chamber of Commerce. Representatives from these groups recommended
to Governor Colgate W. Darden, Jr., that deferred agricultural
workers should be presented an emblem in recognition of their
status as laborers engaged in essential war production.

Late in 1942 a new policy for the guidance of Selective Service
Boards in deferring essential farm labor was approved by the Department
of Agriculture, the War Manpower Commission, and farm
organizations. It provided for the deferment of all agricultural
workers who were responsible for sixteen war units of necessary
products or, under exceptional circumstances, even fewer units. A
war unit represented a measure of these products, for examples, one
milch cow, five acres of corn, or one acre of vegetables for canning.
The Daily Progress regarded this system as another of the astonishing
absurdities which the government sought to put into practice.
The unit system did not, in its opinion, seem to be a practical method
of evaluating the potentialities of a farm hand. What was needed,
it argued, was the kind of farm laborer who could and would give
an honest day's work at a wage within which he could live and which
his employer could afford to pay. “There seems to be no more reason
to test him by these units of production than ... to have him produce
those of his public school record.”[16] Despite the editor's adverse
opinion, the unit system actually proved to be locally an equitable
and adaptable system for assuring the deferment of qualified agricultural
workers. In an effort to apply it fairly, the minimum number
of sixteen war units of farm products was lowered to twelve in
reference to registrants who worked on the steeper and less productive
farms of the county; but the minimum remained sixteen for the more
nearly level farms of the community.

In order to relieve the situation of dairy farmers whose labor supply
was most seriously depleted, dairy hands were given a preferred
claim, exceeding even that of other farm workers, upon deferment
under Selective Service. Conscientious objectors were employed on
dairy farms by the Albemarle County Dairy Herd Improvement
Association, but there was only one of these at a time.

Volunteer city workers who could devote full or part time to
the harvesting of crops were asked to register in May, 1943, by the
Central Virginia Planning Commission in cooperation with the
county agent. R. Watson Sadler, chairman of this Commission's
Farm Labor Committee, was assisted by subcommittees from the
Lions Club and the Young Men's Business Club. Wives of the members
of these subcommittees, together with the High School Victory
Corps, were acting as registrars.

Eugene P. Durrette began work as a farm labor assistant in July
of 1943 and placed 683 persons for seasonal work and thirty-seven

for the full year. Though all demands for workers were not fully
met, early freezes and drought that year somewhat reduced the fruit
crops and other harvests, thus permitting a meager labor supply to
complete the work of gathering in the available produce.

The following year, 1944, when weather conditions were favorable
and fruit crops abundant, the demand for labor was even greater.
Between 2,000 and 2,300 workers were needed for the peach crop,
between 1,200 and 1,500 for the apples. Fruit growers recruited
anyone and everyone. On the seventh of August 260 German prisoners
arrived in Crozet. Approximately 240 of them picked peaches
and apples, filled silos, harvested hay, shucked corn, cut pulpwood,
and sawed logs. D. B. Owen, manager of the Crozet Fruit Growers
Cooperative, was active in organizing their work, which, he observed,
was satisfactory on the whole. Occasional peaches branded with a
swastika or the initials PW were taken from the conveyor belts in
packing houses. “It's exactly the same thing as a 15-year-old
thumbing his nose at you,” said Chesley Haden. “Those Germans
are some of the crack troops of the North African campaign—fine
physical specimens—and they're a little rebellious at times. We have
noted a mixed reaction to their work; some growers say they're all
right, and others say they're worthless.” Though not all of their
employers were satisfied with their production, the overall statistical
record of their work belied any merely prejudiced contention that
the German prisoners were worthless as farm laborers. At the end
of four months they had picked 29,803 bushels of peaches, 133,858
bushels of apples, stacked 370,962 board feet of lumber, shucked
906 barrels of corn, cut 74,113 board feet of saw logs and 105 cords
of pulpwood, pruned 450 peach trees, and done 22,794 hours of
general farm work.[17]

Negroes from the Bahama Islands were hired in accordance with
an agreement between the United States and British governments.
In August, 1944, 285 Bahamians picked and packed Albemarle
County peaches; through October 175 of them harvested apples.
H. L. Dunton, D. A. Tucker, and Marvin J. Powell supervised their
work, which was judged excellent. The British accent of the Bahamians
was noticeable to those who worked with them, and their
fondness for bright dress and zoot suits added color to the harvest
scene. Without their aid fruit valued at $525,000 would not have
been picked. “Importing labor and operating a labor camp is an
expensive business,” said County Agent Scott, “but the expense was
much less than the loss to the nation of essential fruit which could
not have been saved otherwise.”[18]

The critical labor shortage in that banner year for local orchards
was partially alleviated by recruits of yet another picturesque kind.
Seventy-five volunteers of the Women's Land Army—college students,
teachers, business women, and others—went into the peach

orchards and packing sheds. Though comparatively few in number,
inexperienced in physical labor, and previously ignorant of the discomfort
which peach fuzz can produce, they learned quickly the techniques
of picking, grading, and packing the fruit. Soon they had
won the respect of their employers. Mrs. Ruth Burruss Huff arranged
with the White Hall Home Demonstration Club women, under the
leadership of their president, Mrs. L. G.  Roberts , to serve as hostesses to
the Women's Land Army. They turned out in full strength to greet
these women upon their arrival. Refreshments were served. Mrs. T.
O. Scott, chairman of the Albemarle Home Demonstration Committee,
welcomed them. Ann and Patricia Odend'Hal, who had been active
in 4-H Club work for the past ten years, served as dieticians for
these peach packers, some of whom were accommodated in private
homes and others at the Afton Hotel. “If it came to rating the various
peach pickers, I'd put the girls first, the Bahamians second, and the
Germans last,” Chesley Haden declared. “Those Germans may be
gorgeous hunks of men, but they're not much when it comes to picking
peaches.” Agreeing with this rating, T. O. Scott added that
the Women's Land Army, which assisted in packing peaches from
August 7 to 19, proved more satisfactory than any other special laborers.
“Growers who were fortunate enough to secure their help have
praised them highly as intelligent, efficient, and willing workers,” he
said.[19]

In addition to the previously mentioned groups, men, women,
and children, recruited through Charlottesville civic clubs, radio station
WCHV, The Daily Progress, and the Chamber of Commerce,
worked during the peach harvest for purely patriotic reasons. Also
gathering farm crops and fruit were fifteen prisoners of the Crozet
Convict Camp, without whom much corn and hay would in all
probability not have been gotten safely into silos.[20]

Farmers and fruit growers were still in need of labor in 1945.
Local Extension Service officials received 911 requests for help, and
one or more workers were placed on some 292 farms in the county.
The total number of farm labor placements for 1945 was 4,592. In
cooperation with the War Food Administration and under the supervision
of Hunter Ballard, a camp was again set up near Crozet for
133 Bahamian peach pickers. Percy Abell organized the 200 prisoners
of war who harvested fruit, as well as the seventy-five who worked
on farms throughout the year. In the fall of 1945 resolutions were
adopted by the Albemarle County Farm Bureau and the Crozet Fruit
Growers Cooperative asking that the domestic migratory labor, foreign
labor, and prisoners of war labor programs be continued through
the next year. Funds available from the War Manpower Commission
and the War Food Administration were to be exhausted by
January 1, 1946, the War Department planned to halt the hiring
of prisoners as farm laborers, and discharged servicemen and war

workers were in most instances not returning immediately to the
fields. So the farm labor shortage was not relieved promptly after
firing ceased.

Nevertheless, Albemarle County orchardists managed to keep pace
with other American farmers in producing larger quantities of “foods
for victory” during the war years of generally favorable weather.
Never before had they nursed their trees with such care, though at
times nothing less than genuine genius was required if scarce but
essential insecticides were to be on hand when needed. The number
of trees they tended actually declined—slightly in the case of peaches,
markedly in the instance of apples—but they had to find more bushel
baskets and packing crates, which became nearly as scarce as the proverbial
hens' teeth, almost every year. Prophets of doom who were
positive that each bumper crop in turn could not be duplicated the
next year had to eat crow annually, the single exception of any consequence
being that they had the satisfaction of seeing the weather
become in 1943 a fruit grower's gremlin with results disastrous to
peaches and quite harmful to apples. A hard freeze late in the spring
and a severe hailstorm early in the summer of 1945 brought forth a
rash of local predictions that production that year would not exceed
ten per cent of normal. But someone evidently forgot in that busy
year of victory to inform Mother Nature that less was expected of
her in Albemarle County. A few months later orchardists' joy over
the Japanese surrender was tempered with worry over the question
whether the drooping limbs of their trees, laden with another bumper
crop of unprecedented or almost unprecedented quantity and quality,
could continue to support the weight of the fruit until it could be
picked. Official figures compiled by the Department of Agriculture
summarize eloquently the epic saga of Albemarle County fruit growers'
victory over the multitudinous enemies of greater food production.

                     

	1940	1945
Apples
Number of farms reporting	1,011	1,168
Number of trees of all ages	356,626	286,555
Number of bushels harvested	583,580	828,952
Value	$390,999	$1,616,456
Peaches
Number of farms reporting	541	758
Number of trees of all ages	288,403	282,034
Number of bushels harvested	229,026	534,067
Value	$240,477	$1,388,574

The volume of apples produced was increased by fifty per cent and
their value by 200 per cent; the value of the peach crop was multiplied
by six while its bulk was merely doubled. The sharp distinctions between
volume and value revealed by these contrasts point to the delusion
which was implicit but hidden in the illusion of apparent prosperity.
Only if the orchardists faced the fact that every thing and every
service they bought cost more, that dollars which came in relatively
copious quantities had declined in purchasing power in inverse ratio
to the rising dollar value of their product, would they lift the veil
of understanding. By so doing they could expose the deceitful disguise
of glittering gilt which masked a boom not truly golden. Like
the beauty of a face camouflaged with too many cosmetics, such inflationary
prosperity was not deep-seated and probably would not
prove to be lasting.

The significant feature of their wartime experience was, therefore,
to be found in the trustworthy fact that they vastly increased the
physical bulk of their production of very tangible and very desperately
needed foods. Where one apple or one peach had been harvested
before, they contrived to pick one and one-half apples or two
peaches. When the nation and the world needed more fruit, the
farmers of Albemarle County did their share—and more—to make
it available.[21]

Rationing and Price Control

Another problem for the farmer was the shortage of farm machinery.
When war was declared, producers of food were advised to
buy repair parts for their equipment during the first months of 1942,
and many farmers followed this wise counsel. When, late in that
year, farm machinery began to be rationed, with some seventy-five
types of machines being doled out carefully when they were available,
members of the local Farm Machinery Rationing Committee
and the County War Board applied quotas to insure a just distribution
of such items as could be obtained. In 1943, as a matter of
national policy, munitions were granted priority over food production
equipment. As a result only forty percent as much farm machinery
as had been manufactured in the nation in 1940 left the
factories three years later. The same conditions, or worse, prevailed
in 1944, and there was no improvement in 1945.[22]

As the production of food increased each war year, the problem
of marketing was intensified. The Extension Service assisted the
Albemarle Dairymen's Association, the Albemarle Feeder Calf Producers
Association, the Albemarle Wool Pool (affiliated with the
United Wool Growers Association), the Virginia Angus Breeders
Association, and the Albemarle Hereford Association in determining
correct grades for their products, the demand for them, and the best
methods of marketing them. The total value of supplies bought and
farm products marketed by these groups in Albemarle County during
1944 was $449,670. The establishment of a farmers' produce market
in Charlottesville was discussed, but no successful action was
taken.[23]

Price ceilings, the capstone of the arch erected by the nation to
hold back disastrous inflation, were sometimes restrictive enough to

cause temporary bottlenecks in the flow of agricultural produce to
market. Seventy-five members of the Albemarle County Farm Bureau,
which was formed in June, 1943, to promote farmers' interests,
met to discuss the possible effect on farmers of the closing of the
Elliott Ice Company's abattoir department, the only slaughterhouse
in the community. The Albemarle livestock raisers seized upon this
opportunity to air their grievances concerning other Office of Price
Administration and War Food Administration regulations, such as
the fact that hogs were bringing twenty cents more per hundred
pounds in Staunton and Orange, Virginia, than on the Charlottesville
market. No explanation was given: O. P. A. officials insisted
that they were specialists in other fields or had been with the O. P. A.
such a short time that they were prepared to discuss only the abattoir
issue.[24]

A ceiling price of 5.75 cents per pound or $2.76 per forty-eight
pound package (slightly less than the normal fifty-pound bushel)
on apples at point of shipment was announced in October, 1943.
Price advances of approximately eighteen cents each which were to
become effective on November 1, December 1, February 1, and April 1
would enable growers to sell their apples in April, 1944, at $3.48
per forty-eight pound package. This encouraged most orchardists to
store as many of their apples as possible until the ceilings reached
the announced peak. To protect itself, the government reserved the
right to buy apples for the armed forces at any time it chose. Retail
ceilings for apples ranged from 9.5 to 10.5 cents per pound, varying
with the distances they had been shipped from producing areas. These
ceilings were also to advance one-half cent per pound on November
1, December 1, February 1, and April 1.[25]

Government purchases of apples were made in Albemarle County
both before and during the war. In 1941 the Surplus Marketing
Administration was buying apples in an attempt to improve distribution
by preventing a glutted market. A price range of seventy
cents to $1.05 per bushel was then offered by this agency for No. 1
grade apples. In October, 1944, the War Food Administration announced
plans for the purchase of a large quantity of apples in the
four-state Appalachian Area, which included Albemarle County, for
Lend-Lease shipment to Great Britain and other European countries.
For 2 to 2.25 inch apples the price offered was $6.75 a barrel, $2.25
a box. Growers in this locality were satisfied with the price set by
the W. F. A., but the Appalachian Apple Growers, Inc., protested
the government offer at a level below the price ceiling of $2.75,
arguing that it might break the domestic market. It was understood,
however, that the domestic market would have priority if the crop
could be absorbed above the prices offered by the W. F. A. The
export program would receive only that part of the crop not sold
at home to equal or better advantage. Under this W. F. A. program

twenty carloads of Albemarle County apples were sold by November
8. Offers were filed with the Winchester, Virginia, office of the
W. F. A., which accepted the apples packed in “export tub” bushel
baskets.[26]

In 1943 No. 1 grade peaches brought $8.50 a bushel, the highest
price ever offered by Crozet brokers. Twenty-four peach growers
of Albemarle and surrounding counties met in February, 1944, when
a ceiling price for peaches was under consideration, and approved
unanimously the work already done by the two-year-old National
Peach Council. They voted to continue to give it their support. The
local growers asked first, in dealing with O. P. A., for no ceilings,
because the extreme perishability of peaches made marketing controls
or delay of any kind hazardous. If it were found that ceilings had
to be applied, the growers asked a “consumer” ceiling of 12.5 cents
per pound, the same figure requested by apple growers nationally in
the fall of 1943. The price ceiling set in July, 1944, for producers
was $3.66 per bushel and $1.99 per half bushel, equivalent to about
$7.50 a bushel at the consumer level. In the same month the Virginia
Peach Council, which was to become a part of the National
Peach Council, was organized when two dozen or more leading peach
growers of the Middle Piedmont met in Charlottesville. Its object
was to develop united action in trying to solve such problems as labor,
packaging, relations with government officials in Washington, and
the creation of increased consumer demand for their fruit, particularly
in future years which might be threatened by a glutted market.[27]

Soil Conservation and Livestock Production

Despite labor shortages, the rationing of farm machinery, marketing
difficulties, and complicated price changes, a general upward trend
in food production was achieved. This was due in part to changes
in agricultural practices.

One significant local development was the increase in pasture land
acreage during the last year or two of the war. The following figures
show that in 1945 acreage for pastures was double that of 1942:

         

Year	Acres in Cropland	Acres in Orchard	Acres in Pasture
1942	85,823.8	12,468.4	43,436.6
1943	87,056.1	12,403.1	44,940.1
1944	90,930.8	11,727.5	47,587.5
1945	103,154.0[*]	103,154.0[*]	86,906.6[28]

Not only were there more pastures, but their quality was improved.
Greater quantities of lime and superphosphate were used during the
first two years of the war than in previous years, and still more in
1944. By 1945 twice as much fertilizer as in preceding years was
applied on many farms, resulting in a high yield per acre. Each year
extensive plantings of winter legumes, rye grass, and alfalfa were

made, permitting longer grazing seasons and shorter barn feeding
periods.[29]

Conservationist John A. Smart estimated that 55,000 acres in
Albemarle had been submitted to conservation practices, to which a
twenty per cent increase in production might be attributed. Some
fifteen per cent of the county was engaged in carrying out terracing
and strip cropping in 1944. The soil of two of the farms once owned
by Jefferson, “Tufton” and “Shadwell,” was being restored.[30]

A striking example of these practices is the story of transformations
made on H. V. Herold's farm, “Holkham,” near Ivy. Aside
from the sheer beauty of the harmonious contours of this farm, here
was demonstrated what can be achieved when man respects the soil
instead of taking all it can offer while giving it back nothing in
return. Ninety of Herold's 220 acres were uncultivated in 1936,
the year his practice of soil conservation was begun. Slopes were
bare and, in consequence, badly eroded. Rows of corn were planted
“up and down.” Lespedeza and peas alone comprised the hay crops;
none of the hay was fertilized. Land used for pasture was in great
part overrun with saw-briars and broomsedge. Stock could be
grazed, therefore, only five months each year, and the owner was
compelled annually to buy about $400 worth of hay. His cows
required large amounts of grain, which was not raised on his farm,
so that he was forced to buy his entire supply of dairy feed grain.
When the United States entered the war, he had been practicing
scientific farming for six years. Consequently, he was in a position
to make heavy demands of his soil, while at the same time he was
able to conserve its value. Trees had been planted on his hillsides
to prevent the soil from washing away under heavy rains; fields
were strip cropped instead of gullied; planting rows followed the
natural contours of the land; minimum loss of topsoil was incurred;
annual harvests increased amazingly. One acre of corn planted in
land thus properly utilized produced as much as four or five acres
had previously brought forth. One third of the pastures were fertilized
every year. Alfalfa was planted to replace broomsedge on
five acres, and the barns were full of hay by June of each of the war
years. By 1945 the owner was growing a large part of the grains
needed by his herds: he was harvesting some 1,500 bushels of oats
from thirty acres and about fifteen tons of corn per acre for silage.
Because of these better farming techniques—and also, admittedly,
because of a substantial rise in prices—the income received from his
milk production quadrupled between 1936 and 1945.[31]

The touring author of an article on the advantages of soil conservation
which was published in a nationally circulated magazine
soon after the war ended observed that rural Virginia was having
its face lifted by scientific farming practices. In Albemarle County
this traveler found an ardent and quotable convert to the new agricultural

“Holkham,” the H. V. Herold farm near Ivy, is a model of soil
conservation.

Richard Overton and his wife, soil conservationists, display a war
product.

order in the person of S. A. Jessup. Impressed with Jessup's
excellent pastures and purebred Guernseys, the visitor was told
that Jessup had redeemed lands once so exhausted that one “couldn't
even raise a disturbance” on them. The proud livestock grower added,
“I'd just as soon raise polecats on my farm as corn or tobacco.”[32]

A greater quantity and better quality of beef cattle were raised in
Albemarle during the years 1942–1943 than previously due to the
extension of pasture lands and to the greater care which was given
to the breeding of stock and the control of parasites and diseases. In
the winter of 1943–1944 a government hay-subsidy program was
carried out to compensate for the effects of the 1943 drought. Production
of beef cattle was thereby maintained at a high level. In the
summer of 1944 another drought brought a decline in hay and pasture
production, and heavy rains in the fall also damaged the hay
crops along the James River. Nevertheless, the output for the county
was higher than during preceding years. T. O. Scott estimated that
some farms had as much as four times as many animal units as in
previous years. So great an expansion in cattle production had its
repercussions. One of these was that marketing facilities, which had
been adequate in 1940, were inadequate in 1944.[33]

Livestock production ranked third in importance as a source of
income to Albemarle County farmers by 1943. Auction sales of
feeder calves were begun in 1941. Prior to 1939 calves had been
raised on a hit or miss basis, but after new methods of feeding were
adopted, as suggested by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and the
Albemarle Feeder Calf Producers Association was organized, the
business rose in importance. The sale in October, 1941, brought in
a total of $14,832.00 for 290 calves; the following year 476 calves
sold for $30,000.00.[34]

Not the least enthusiastic among the livestock raisers of the county
were 4-H Club boys, both white and Negro, who carried out livestock
projects during each of the war years and competed in contests
sponsored by Sears Roebuck and Company. At the Angus sale in
the spring of 1944 calves raised by these boys won favorable attention.
Some of these schoolboys built up herds of their own: others
fattened only one or two animals for the market. While the number
of their cattle was only a small part of the total production in
the county, the real importance of this work, directed mainly by
H. M. Brumback, lay in the training and experience gained by a
generation which might become the future cattle, hog, and poultry
raisers of the locality.[35]

A comparison between the cattle raised in Albemarle County and
their value in the years 1940 and 1945 shows a marked increase.

       

	1940	1945
Farms reporting	1,974	1,970
Number of cattle and calves	16,779	22,576
Value	$633,540	$1,613,040[36]

Advancing in step with the agronomy program, the dairy industry
benefitted from the general improvement and expansion of pasture
lands which permitted longer grazing seasons. As methods of
breeding dairy cattle were perfected and disease and parasites were
controlled, milk production rose during each of the war years until
1945. Shortages of labor, farm machinery, and protein supplements
explained the slight decline of that year. A total of 3,119,606 gallons
was produced in 1945, however, as compared with 2,593,668
in 1940, and the value of dairy products sold in the county rose
from $282,590 in 1940 to $518,925 in 1945.[37]

An increase of nearly 2,000 hogs in Albemarle County between
1940 and 1945 may not have been surprising. Residents of Sixth
Street, S. E., in Charlottesville, who seemed as interested in producing
“food for victory” as their fellow citizens of the county, petitioned
the City Council for the extension of hog-raising zones so
they might fulfil their patriotic obligations. Pig pens on the back
side of their lots would not be near their neighbors, they argued.
City Health Director T. S. Englar admitted that, although hogs normally
do not enhance a city's peace and cleanliness, they might have
to be excused during the emergency. “After all,” he said, “there are
swine in some sections already and, conditions remaining the same,
a pig near Rugby Road is little different from his cousin in Belmont.”
As long as rules of decency and everyday sanitation were observed,
styes were kept a reasonable distance from kitchen doors, and winds
held their proper direction, the doctor supposed that the hog in the
yard movement might not be too objectionable. Faced for the third
time with the issue, the City Council finally voted that hogs might
be kept in the city limits only if their pens were more than 250 feet
from the nearest dwelling and if their location was approved by the
Chief of Police. The required distance automatically eliminated from
conversion to pork production all but a few lots within the city.
At the time, in February, 1942, there were sixty-seven hog owners
in the city. Their number could hardly be much enlarged under the
new ordinance, but city dwellers who dreamed of fat porkers in their
back yards would probably have forced an immediate reconsideration
of the question if they had foreseen the price advances which
were later to make them recall with acute nostalgia that they had
been able even after Pearl Harbor to buy a pound of bacon for
twenty-six cents and two pounds of fresh spareribs for less than
forty cents.[38]

Although there was only an inconsequentially small increase during
the war years in Albemarle County's sheep population, their value
rose from $21,362 to $37,365—a pair of figures which provides an
eloquent commentary on the wartime price spiral. The increase from
3,568 sheep in 1940 to 3,764 in 1945 might have been greater but
for such factors as the difficulties of procuring wire for fencing,

the omnipresent labor shortage, and fear of predatory dogs. There
was more improvement in the quality than in the quantity of local
sheep, largely because of efficient control of internal parasites and
vigilant prevention of disease.[39]

Poultry was still another product of Albemarle County farms
which enlisted in the war effort. When all other edible meats except
fish were rationed, poultry took on new significance, and eggs were
also in unprecedented demand. Home Demonstration agents and
4-H Club leaders gave invaluable help to owners of small flocks
as well as to commercial producers of fryers, broilers, eggs, and turkeys.
Nearly every farm in the county had its poultry flock. Perfected
methods of feeding, housing, and culling were adopted; parasites
were effectively controlled. Scott contrasted the heavy losses
of diseased fowl which were annually incurred during the earlier part
of his eighteen years of experience in Albemarle County with the
decreased mortality of the war years. Prevention of disease, in his
opinion, contributed in large measure to the increased production of
poultry called for in the local market and by the War Food Administration.
The Department of Agriculture determined that the 88,360
chickens in the county in 1940 were valued at $50,365, while the
115,411 chickens in 1945 were worth $139,647. In other words,
their value was increased by 180 per cent, though their number was
increased only thirty per cent—again a significant commentary on
what happened to the purchasing power of the American dollar
despite price control. Income from all poultry products sold by
farms reporting to the department increased from $147,737 to $375,
658 during the same five years.

Official statistics of the Department of Agriculture have reported
that the total income to Albemarle County farmers from sales of all
types of livestock and livestock products rose from $815,087 in
1940 to $1,813,736 in 1945. The total value of all livestock classified
by the Department increased during the same period from
$1,313,163 to $2,383,810.

Because of wartime restrictions upon transportation, the urgency
of the nation's need for the marketing of available meat, and a desire
to accommodate Charlottesville's “country cousins” of Albemarle
County, the City Council had rescinded its prewar ordinance prohibiting
the overnight storage of livestock within the city limits.
This action had benefitted the Charlottesville Livestock Market and
the producers who brought their animals to it for sale by auctions
which sometimes extended far into the night. Whether the animals
had been sold or not, it was often impossible to remove them from
the city before they disturbed would-be sleepers of the vicinity. After
V-J Day long-suffering residents of the area demanded a reenactment
of the prewar ordinance.[40] More than a year elapsed before a generally
agreeable solution to the problem was reached. The city purchased

the auction site, and the Livestock Market was relocated beyond
the city limits. But that is really a postwar story, and its
details are not for this volume.

Victory Gardening and Food Conservation

Vegetables were grown in Charlottesville and Albemarle during
the years 1942–1945 on a scale never before remotely approached.
The County Board of Agriculture launched the Victory Garden campaign
in the first months of 1942. Community and neighborhood
leaders and Home Demonstration Clubs promoted the Live at Home
program among 2,367 rural families, a large majority of the total
number of farm families in the county. Mrs. Bessie Dunn Miller
and her staff gave personal instruction to 249 families in 1943, teaching
them how to produce sufficient food to meet all the demands of
home consumption. Spurred on by the slogans “Food Fights For
Freedom” and “You Can Shorten the War with Food,” ninety-six
per cent of the rural population was raising its home food supply
in 1944.

Quite active in this movement were the 4-H Club boys and girls.
In the course of 1942 they cultivated 321 acres of land. An average
of thirty girls took part in the Sears Roebuck gardening contests
every year of the war. Some $700 worth of food was consumed
in the homes of these thirty girls in 1943 alone. Louise Morris of
Free Union, first prize winner in 1944, produced enough food to
feed her family and can 504 quarts. Edith Sullivan, also of Free
Union, winner in 1945, produced enough food to can 940 quarts.
Though the boys were engaged for the greater part of their time in
livestock raising projects, as many as seventy-three of them completed
gardening projects in 1943. Maxine Lamb, president of the
Albemarle County 4-H Club Council in 1944, won a $25 war bond
and entered the 4-H Club National Victory Achievement Contest
for her contribution in food production during 1943. On the 379-acre
farm of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Lamb of Route 2,
Charlottesville, she planted her own Victory Garden, which consisted
of 150 tomato plants, 200 sweet potato plants, twenty-four
pepper plants, twenty-four eggplants, twenty celery plants, plus corn
and string beans. She assisted her father with the planting and
working of 3,000 tomato plants, 1,500 cabbage plants, and 1,000
sweet potato plants. She fed and cared for 500 baby chickens, raised
pigs of her own, helped her oldest brother with the feeding of fourteen
calves until they were old enough to graze, and assisted the hired
hands in milking 118 cows. She picked twenty gallons of blackberries,
prepared thirty-five quarts of them for her pantry shelves
and assisted with the canning of ninety-five other quarts, and helped
to put up 183 quarts of string beans, fifteen quarts of carrots, twenty-five
quarts of squash, and thirty quarts of butter beans. She served
ninety meals and planned 150 other menus for her family, remodeled

five of her old dresses, helped clean and wash the family clothes
weekly, collected old phonograph records, tin cans, scrap metals, and
rubber, and helped to sell war stamps through her school and club.
Three members of the Albemarle 4-H Clubs, selected for outstanding
club work in the county, appeared on the coast-to-coast broadcast
of the United States Department of Agriculture's National Farm
and Home Hour in the spring of 1944 and told how they were carrying
on Jefferson's traditions in agriculture. The trio included
Maxine Lamb, Dan Maupin of White Hall, and Anne Carpenter
White of Scottsville. Their subject was, “Four-H Builds on Foundations
Laid by Jefferson.” Two Albemarle County girls were declared
4-H Club canning champions for Virginia, Bessie Preddy in
1943 and Maxine Lamb in 1944. Members of the Negro 4-H Clubs
made a profit of $1,471 from vegetables raised by seventy-three boys
in 1942; in the course of the last war year, ninety-nine Negro boys
completed 120 gardening projects which netted a profit of $2,100.[41]

Under the direction of the Charlottesville and Albemarle County
Civilian Defense Council, Coordinator Seth Burnley formed a Victory
Garden Committee for the city of Charlottesville on March 10,
1942. Louis Chauvenet was chairman; Mrs. Theodore Hough and
Mrs. Leroy Snow served as committee members. Among the first
steps taken in the Charlottesville campaign were successful efforts
made by Mrs. Dudley C. Smith to procure for amateur gardeners who
aspired to green thumbs vacant lots and available plows, each of
which, of course, had suddenly been exalted to the lofty status of
being at a premium. Mrs. Snow encouraged gardeners by supplying
plants in return for a share in their produce. Thus were many
city gardeners provided with land, tools, and plants. Mrs. Hough,
an accomplished horticulturist, provided what amounted to an education
for the inexperienced urban vegetable growers. Chairman
Chauvenet and Mrs. Hough visited in person every city garden once
each week throughout the summer of 1942. Twice a week she broadcast
advice on gardening from radio station WCHV. Every Monday
afternoon she held a forum at the Court House. Occasionally
she addressed the civic clubs in the city and the Parent-Teacher Association.
In March, 1943, she began to write a column which was
published in The Daily Progress. Through this medium she dispensed
pertinent suggestions about how to grow vegetables and how
to avoid unproductively torturing one's aching back, for backaches
had become the most common ailment all over town. Victory Gardening
fever, a symptom which preceded sore knees and spinal columns
which could be straightened up only with pain, was quite contagious.
One insight into the amazing rapidity with which it infected all
areas of the city is afforded by the fact that Charlottesville had a
quota of 2,800 vegetable gardens in 1944 and by the impression of

Victory Gardening leaders, who never found time to take an actual
census of plots cultivated, that the quota was definitely exceeded.

Meantime, various other groups in the city promoted the Victory
Garden campaign. Among these was a Children's Victory Garden
Club, the first of its kind in the state, organized in the spring of
1942 and co-sponsored by the City Recreation Department and the
Rivanna Garden Club, the latter of which furnished land, tools,
seeds, and prizes. Miss Nan Crow and Mrs. Delos Kidder planned
and personally directed gardens near Moore's Creek on the Monticello
Road. Boys and girls tilled twenty garden plots there, raising
vegetables for their families and for the Children's Home. They
gained a valuable experience in the rudiments of gardening and
learned surprising things. One of them expected to find his ripened
radishes tied in bunches and waving on a bush!

Boy Scouts, white and Negro, undertook and completed garden
projects. Troop 1 at the University Baptist Church cultivated some
seven acres of land on Route 29. The boys of the downtown Troop
1, sponsored by the Charlottesville Presbyterian Church, worked
as many as twenty-two gardens of their own. Troop 5, sponsored
by the Church of the Holy Comforter, cultivated a large garden in
the Fry's Spring area. Negro Scouts' garden projects were carried
out on the farm of their leader, Dr. J. A. Jackson.[42]

The city's first Victory Garden Fair was held at the Old Armory
in the autumn of 1943. Vegetable and flower growers who had
proudly entered 300 or more specimens of their handiwork inspected
the exhibits of vegetables, fruits, canned goods, and flowers with
the green eyes of jealousy whenever they spotted the carefully selected
and spotlessly clean products of a rival who might provide stiff competition
for whatever prize they coveted. Miss R. Belle Burke, district
Home Demonstration agent for Northern Virginia, and Miss Ina
Glick, who served as judges, had no easy task choosing the most nearly
perfect example of each variety, but their decisions were accepted with
general good humor. H. M. Brumback demonstrated easy ways of
storing foods and root crops for winter use, and Mrs. Huff explained
how to preserve foods by dehydration. Again the next year the Albemarle
Garden Club, Rivanna Garden Club, and the National
Women's Farm and Garden Club held a Victory Garden and Flower
Show, to which the First Methodist Church played host. At the
same time the Albemarle Garden Club and the City Recreation Department
sponsored a similar contest in Washington Park, and more
than 200 exhibits of superb produce were displayed by Negro
gardeners.[43]

If home grown foods were to render maximum service in the
war effort, a large percentage of the total production of Victory
Gardens had to be preserved for consumption after the harvest season,
when fresh local produce was unavailable. Aside from other

obvious virtues, such preservation could appreciably alleviate demand
for the rationed output of commercial canneries and pressures upon
the nation's overburdened transportation system. Much emphasis
was, therefore, placed upon persuading and teaching gardeners to
lay aside for the rainy day of the unproductive winter season a
properly preserved part of their summertime plenty. Local Home
Demonstration agents and Club leaders instructed in the most modern
techniques and equipment for home canning, though some of
their pupils couldn't for years find a pressure cooker for sale at
any price. The less familiar but, in the instances of some foods,
not less useful methods of food conservation, such as drying, brining,
and storing, were also taught and demonstrated. The clubs'
members set a good example by canning 56,107 quarts of various
foods in 1942. The following year, spurred on by their tireless
leaders, 129 farm women had become expert canners and put up
45,420 quarts of fruit and vegetables and stored an additional 9,265
bushels. During the year 1944 rural families canned 56,958 quarts
of fruit, meats, and vegetables; brined 7,719 gallons; dried 2,468
pounds; cured 8,975 pounds; stored 3,860 bushels; and froze 9,978
pounds. In the last war year 52,776 quarts of fruits were canned;
2,108 pounds dried; 18,540 pounds cured; 38,144 bushels stored;
and 31,783 pounds frozen. Girls of the 4-H Clubs put up 28,106
cans of food in 1943, an average of 51 cans apiece. In 1944 thirty-five
of their more diligent members put up 5,271 quarts, an average
of about 153 tins or jars per capita. On a somewhat smaller scale
in 1945 a total of 10,068 quarts were preserved, maintaining approximately
the per capital level of fifty per girl which had been
established in 1943.

When the local rationing board ruled that a person could not buy
home canned foods without the surrender of ration coupons, the
County War Board passed a resolution in support of some means
whereby people could sell their canned home products without having
to ask rationing points.[44]

Plans for a canning center in Charlottesville were formulated in
April of 1943 by the Kiwanis Club and the Central Virginia Planning
Commission. It was located in the basement of the New
Armory. The Nehi Bottling Company loaned two large pressure
cookers. Mrs. John A. Smart served as expert supervisor during the
month of June, and Mrs. Fay Barrow took charge during July. A
charge of five cents per can or jar covered inspection of the fruit and
vegetables grown by city and county women and the right to use
the pressure cookers. In a month's time eighty-three women had
conserved 5,558 cans of food. Mrs. R. L. Allen alone canned 500
quarts of vegetables and meat, the largest amount put up there by
one person. The final record for the first year, 1943, was impressive:
within seven months 28,000 jars of home-produced foods had

been processed. Expenses had been shared by the City School Board
and the City Council, but their burdens had been made light by the
$500 which had been donated by the Kiwanis Club. In the same
year Negro women had put up 1,081 cans of foods at their canning
center in the Jefferson School under the supervision of Miss Laura
J. Wyatt and Mrs. Evangeline Jones.

The canning center in the Armory had been run at capacity in
1943 processing vegetables, but no fruit had been handled. A
drought in June and July, 1944, however, seriously curtailed the
vegetable crop. Thus the good providers who frequented the center
were enabled to turn to the preserving of fruit, a happy circumstance
in view of the bumper peach crop of that summer. Approximately
150 women there preserved 3,000 jars of peaches and an unrecorded
number of jars of apples. Coupons for canning sugar were issued
in enormous quantities even before the harvest season began. County
women received authorizations to buy 364,116 pounds of sugar, and
city canners were issued coupons for 281,460 pounds. By V-J Day
55,000 cans of food had been processed in the canning center for consumption
at home and abroad.

The Scottsville canning center was opened on July 14, 1944, in a
cinder block building on the edge of the school grounds which had
been erected by the county government and equipped through expenditures
of Federal funds. Thomas A. Allison, Agriculture teacher
at the Scottsville High School, was from the first the chief promoter
of the project, but he was able to enlist the support of the Lions Club
of Scottsville. Mrs. Inez Moore of Warren, who was in charge of
the canning center, was assisted by Rufus Rush.

During the first season a charge of three cents each was made to
canners for pint tin cans obtained at the center; the charge for quart
cans was four cents. After the first summer and autumn the costs
of fuel used in the center had to be met by the local community, and
tin became more expensive, so these prices for cans were raised to four
and six cents, respectively.

During 1944 the thrifth housewives of the community prepared
19,854 cans of food at the center. On the busiest day of that year
585 cans were processed. In this period 160 white and 64 Negro
families used the canning center. Later years brought increases in
these figures. Albemarle County canners from as far away as Crozet
converged upon Scottsville, and the center served also many people
from neighboring Buckingham and Fluvanna counties. In 1947 a
total of 43,930 cans of food were processed in Scottsville by 369
white families and 90 Negro families.

When requests from Charlottesville and Albemarle men in the
armed forces began to come for chicken, nuts, steak, pork, and fruit
cake, the women at the center prepared Christmas packages for mailing

before October 15, 1944, in order that local servicemen who
were overseas might benefit from home-grown foods and revel in
nostalgic feasts especially prepared for them by loved ones at home.
Still remembered with particular poignancy is the avid interest and
devotion with which the wives and fiancees of some physicians of
the 8th Evacuation Hospital could talk of hardly anything else for
weeks but what they were canning amid summer heat at the center
for their long-absent husbands' and sweethearts' Christmas dinners
and how many packages they had already taken to the post
office.

The United Nations Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Administration
asked for a Food Bank in 1945. Mrs. Ruth Burruss Huff
called together the heads of all city and county organizations which
could give effectual cooperation in gathering and processing food
for foreign relief. Choice fruits and vegetables from Victory Gardens
all over Charlottesville and Albemarle County were donated by
Father and Mother, Son and Daughter. Generous quantities of
prized home-grown produce were transported to the canning centers
in Charlottesville and Scottsville. Home Demonstration Club women,
4-H Club girls, Red Cross Canteen workers, and other city and county
women did the canning. With lumber donated by the Barnes Lumber
Company, members of the Young Men's Business Club, of which
Harry A. Wright was president, did the packing and crating. A total
of 3,000 cans of food was sent to destitute peoples in conquered countries,
a gift representing the concerted efforts of the residents of this
community.[45]

Under the direction of the Civilian Defense Office, a local nutrition
committee was organized in 1942. At its first meeting a representative
from the Farm Security Administration explained the Share-the-Meat
program. Home Demonstration women and 4-H Club
girls in both county and city studied the nutritive value of foods,
how to plan balanced meals, and home methods of baking bread and
making cheese.

The alarming condition of some children in rural schools who,
it was found, often stayed the full school day with no nourishment
was improved when seventeen Home Demonstration Clubs cooperated
in serving lunches to these children. In two communities 4-H
Club girls canned food for the school lunches. By 1945 nutrition
problems had diminished, but they still persisted in six of the county
schools. Doctors who examined 1,363 school children in Albemarle
County in the fall of 1945 found that 1,161 were not in
perfect physical condition.

When registration for War Ration Book Number 2 began in
1943, Home Demonstration leaders provided information at the
registration centers as to the intelligent use of ration points in meal

planning and marketing. Typical of rural dietary and economic
trends which food rationing had caused or stimulated were these
three facts: by the end of the war many families were making their
own syrup and raising bees for honey to counteract the sugar shortage;
others were making cheese in quantities sufficient for the family
food supply; still others were raising and canning more tomatoes to
replace citrus fruits.[46]

Harvesting Forest Fibers

Not only the fields but also the forests of Albemarle were made
to contribute to winning the war. Sixty farmers cooperated with
the Thomas Jefferson Farm Forestry Project operated in conjunction
with the Thomas Jefferson Soil Conservation District in Albemarle,
Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa, and Nelson counties. During the year
preceding June, 1944, they cut 448,000 cubic feet of pulpwood and
815,000 board feet of sawlogs, all of which went to the war effort.
Because they harvested this lumber in accordance with good forestry
practices, continued production was assured in the years to come.
The same areas would produce the same amount of wood every year.
In the fall of 1944 a power-driven, labor saving saw was introduced
into the county as a result of the acute labor shortage and the importance
of lumber and its derivatives in war industries. Within a
given time this new equipment could accomplish the work of about
ten men. Farmers were urged in the winter of 1944 to use their
spare time until spring for the harvesting of pulpwood on their lands.
The condition of the pulpwood industry was critical, and pulp and
paper mills were faced with the possibility of closing unless production
was increased. In April, 1945, it was estimated that 2,000
cords of pulpwood were being shipped out of the county each month,
thirty-five to forty per cent of which were being contributed by individual,
non-commercial harvesters. War materials made from wood
fiber—besides all varieties of paper and paper containers—included
aviators vests, bomb rings, camouflage nets, first-aid kits, gas mask
filters, hospital wadding, maps, photographic film, smokeless powder,
and supply parachutes. Arrangements were made through Ellis L.
Lyon, farm forester of the Virginia Forest Service, in cooperation
with the Albemarle County Pulpwood Committee to move wood
to market in trucks.

The Forest Fire Fighters Service was created by the local Civilian
Defense Council to assist the fire control forces of state and Federal
forest protection agencies, which were finding it difficult to employ
fire fighters. Cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was
promised in obtaining evidence for the prosecution of any fire law
violations which threatened or damaged war facilities or Federal
property. As forest products were critical war materials, forest fires

not only sabotaged war production but drew manpower away from
farms and essential industries. Federal sabotage laws as well as state
fire prevention statutes were invoked against persons responsible for
them. It was estimated that $13,861 worth of marketable timber
was burned in Albemarle County during the six-year period preceding
1946. Twenty-four boys of the Scottsville High School completed
the training course required for membership in the Forest Fire
Fighters Service and were entitled to wear the badge showing the
outline of a tree in red on a triangular background of white and blue.
The boys were organized in fire fighting crews, with leaders and
assistant leaders, and were ready to respond to the calls of state forest
wardens to fight fires when other manpower was not readily available.
Tools and transportation were furnished by the Virginia Forest
Service, and the boys were to be paid the same wages as other
fire fighters.[47]

Some Overall Observations

A few overall wartime trends in Albemarle County agriculture
may be summarized. The number of farms was 2,599 in 1945 and
had increased by only eight since 1940. But the total value of all
their products harvested had almost trebled, growing from $1,880,619
in 1940 to $5,504,494 in 1945. The average value of their
total annual produce, exclusive of that eaten by farm animals, had
jumped from about $911 per farm to $1,981. Since the physical
volume of products had been expanded by only something like thirty
or forty per cent at most, these figures reflect the inflationary price
spiral which characterized the nation's economy more than they constitute
a true measure of increased production or an accurate index
to the prosperity of Albemarle County farmers.

The number of full owners of farms increased from 1,987 in
1940 to 2,118 in 1945, and accordingly the number of tenants decreased
from 411 to 285 and part owners from 131 to 113. While
838 farms had electricity in 1940, a total of 1,192 enjoyed the
privileges of electrification in 1945. Hired laborers numbering 1,776
in 1939 were paid $722,468 in cash wages, but in sharp contrast
711 laborers in 1944 were paid cash wages of $1,148,311. The
following table classifies the seven leading types of Albemarle County
farms in the order of the total value of their products, exclusive of
what was fed to their own livestock or used for seed:

               

	Farms Reporting	Total Value of Farm Products, 1945
Fruit and nut farms	398	$2,170,942
Livestock farms	390	890,969
Farms producing primarily for own household use	1,438	536,791
Dairy farms	59	501,521
General farms	252	462,986
Poultry farms	96	249,904
Forest product farms	97	133,535[48]

Desirable farms were in active demand during the war, according
to local realtors, who said they found it quite difficult to find farms
to sell. Some submarginal farms had been abandoned by owners
who were attracted to the higher wages they could earn in war industries.
When farms were occasionally auctioned to settle estates,
the livestock and farm machinery brought good prices. Several large
farms were purchased by buyers from a distance who intended to
raise cattle on a highly specialized basis. On the other hand, another
citizen contended that nearly every farm on the Lynchburg Road was
for sale and that farm owners had been robbed too long. He protested
that it was hard for them to get anything like the fair value
of their property. Good farm land within two miles of Charlottesville
and the University was valuable. A more distant farm on a
back road could not be compared with land which was “close in”
and in an exclusive residential neighborhood. The average farm rose
in price in Albemarle County from $7,333 to $7,501 between 1940
and 1945, the average price per acre from $56.29 to $58.83. So
although the prices of farm products climbed rapidly on the inflationary
spiral and the cash wages paid labor rose noticeably, the value
of farm property lagged far behind and advanced to only an inconsequential
degree.[49]

As was true in most of the other communities in the United States,
the people of Albemarle County and Charlottesville cooperated with
the Federal Government in its program of food production to meet the
gargantuan demands of war. They helped to make it possible for Secretary
of Agriculture Clinton P. Anderson to say that the national
food output was thirty-eight per cent greater during 1940–1944
than in 1935–1939. And, when they occasionally felt a bit rebellious
against apparent food shortages and were willing to kick over
the traces with which they pulled their share of the load, they realized
dimly or perceived clearly that, as the Secretary and other authorities
often reiterated, the national civilian food supply per capita,
after deducting allotments to military needs and Lend-Lease shipments,
was greater through each of the war years than during 1935–
1939 and during the First World War.[50]