| This dissertation examines the remarkably tensile nature, and eventual decline, of the Cooperative Extension Service's home demonstration program during much of its tenure in Florida. Lawmakers and reformers intended home demonstration, created by legislative act in 1914, to be a comprehensive system of rural uplift, via education among rural families. Home demonstration functioned as one division of a three-pronged extension apparatus that also included farm demonstration and 4-H. All extension workers utilized demonstrations as the backbone of their educational mission. Rather than rely solely on traditional materials and abstract ideas, however, home demonstration agents extended their own domestic science education to women by conducting demonstrations in rural homes and communities, organizing project clubs, and tailoring their work to community needs. Home demonstration involved a wide range of programs for both women and girls, but participation in any program or event was voluntary; information about new ideas, successful techniques, and agent reliability spread largely by word of mouth.; Many historians studying home demonstration have characterized and dismissed it as plagued by racism, sexism, romanticism, class and regional bias, and limited efficacy. Though these conditions, to varying degrees, were persistent problems for home demonstration, the program proved remarkably durable. Equally important as its longevity was the impact of endurance on home demonstration's original sense of purpose. I examine this relationship in light of home demonstration's dynamism, which fostered adaptability and, in turn, durability in the face of internal and external change. The framework for this analysis is home demonstration's evolution from a deeply focused, cohesive mission to an imprecise collection of specialties. To demonstrate this dynamism-longevity-evolution connection, I analyze home demonstration's rural reform lineage, its professional dynamics, its reliance on technology and expertise, its cooperative health programs, and its expansive activism. The key to home demonstration's vitality has been momentum, diplomacy, utility, and initiative, and the key to its significance is its evolving place in the wider, international story of reform in favor of rural women. |
