BOYS' AND. GIRLS' CLUBS 



883 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 



lar home project work as required by the 

 leaders; 62,882 made complete and attested 

 reports on the regular blanks furnished for the 

 purpose and completed all the work of the 

 season or year, which was forty per cent of 

 the total enrollment and sixty-four per cent 

 of those who undertook the work. Out of the 

 total number that completed the work, 24,299 

 boys and girls were engaged in what is termed 

 profit-making projects, from which they pro- 

 duced $509,325 worth of food products (gross 

 receipts). The total cost of the work from all 

 sources local, state and national was $166,- 

 405.67, thus showing a per capita cost for the 

 work of eighty cents, while the production 

 value per member was $20.96. Basing the per 



conducting demonstrations and assisting in 

 keeping up a live active interest in the work 

 during the hot summer months. The coopera- 

 tive leaders of twenty-eight states conducted 

 1,670 canning demonstrations for the training 

 of club members in the art of home canning 

 and for saving surplus fruits and vegetables; 

 the total attendance of these canning demon- 

 strations was 156,580. In addition to this the 

 same leaders conducted 3,829 field meetings 

 and personally visited 27,733 club plots. Dur- 

 ing the same calendar year they prepared and 

 distributed 2,108,456 pieces of follow-up instruc- 

 tions or directions in the support of the work. 

 The United States Department of Agricul- 

 ture, through the Extension Office of the North 



FROM HOME GARDEN TO HOME CANNING 



capita cost of the work only upon those who 

 completed all the work and made the crop 

 reports required, that cost would be $2.02. 

 Most of the boys and girls who were enrolled 

 in the club work and who were not able to 

 do the home project work were members of 

 the club groups, met monthly or bi-monthly, 

 studied the lessons, participated in the discus- 

 sions and received the instructions from the 

 state leaders in connection with the work, and 

 most of them did part of the work, but for 

 various reasons lack of land, objection on the 

 part of parents, etc. they failed to complete 

 the work and render reports. 



The state leaders, in addition to their own 

 direction of details of the work, secured 11,478 

 local volunteer leaders who assumed coopera- 

 tive leadership with them and helped the paid 

 leaders in local follow-up work, such as hold- 

 ing of group meetings, visiting club plots, 



and West, supplemented this amount, with 

 1,140,146 circulars, sheets of instructions, etc. 

 An illustration of the influence of boys' and 

 girls' club work on adults may well be shown 

 from one single project called the home- 

 canning club work. During the twelve months 

 of the calendar year 1915, 26,534 adults wrote 

 to the office and requested that they be given 

 the privilege of using the home canning in- 

 structions which were available to the boys' 

 and girls' club work; 3,156 of these adults 

 reported to the office at the close of the sea- 

 son that they had canned 275,836 quarts of 

 fruits, and 270,659 quarts of vegetables, or a 

 total of 546,495 quarts of canned products, an 

 average of over 109 quarts per family repre- 

 sented in the work ; one-half of these products 

 were made up of the inexpensive home-grown 

 vegetables. It would doubtless be safe to say 

 that much of the fruits and vegetables thus 



