"Whither Rural Youth?" 4-H at Home and Abroad after World War II

The boys' and girls' farm and home life clubs known as 4-H emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century amid growing concern about the quality of country life in the United States.  By teaching rural youth modern, scientific agricultural and domestic practices, the Agriculture Department's Cooperative Extension Service hoped to make farming more profitable and attractive to the next generation of Americans.  In the ensuing decades, 4-H clubs grew in popularity and scope, until they became woven into the fabric of rural life across the nation.  But in the years following the Second World War, the rural population of the U.S. declined precipitously, leaving 4-H concerned about its future in an increasingly suburban and globally prominent nation.  My paper explores how 4-H transformed itself in the immediate postwar period from a primarily agricultural organization into one focused on urban improvement and international development in addition to domestic rural life issues.  By expanding its programs into two new regions -- U.S. cities and suburbs, and foreign countries -- 4-H introduced different kinds of projects to its curriculum, made citizenship and service increasingly central components of club work, and elevated the figure of the American farm youth to worldwide significance. While 4-H's urban programs taught "traditional" craft skills to city youth at home, on the global stage, the International Farm Youth Exchange (IFYE) sought peace and economic recovery through the down-to-earth diplomacy of rural boys and girls from around the world working together in the fields.  4-H's emergence onto the global and metropolitan scenes thus marked an inflection point in the organization's aims, a shift from focusing on making American farming more scientific and "modern," to perpetuating an idealized vision of rural life alongside massive changes in agriculture at home while translating its modernizing agenda abroad.