Keeping the Link to the Land: Liberty Hyde Bailey, 4-H, Girl Scouts, and the Transition from the Pioneer Era into Industrial Modernity

Abstract

This paper links the emerging wilderness preservation movement and the exodus of young people from farms to cities at the beginning of the twentieth century by showing them as both as consequences of industrialization. It explores the role of education in attempting to keep children interested in farming through 4-H, and connect them with nature (broadly defined), though Girl Scouts. Through the Country Life movement, it explores efforts to modernize the country while still retaining its essential character. It also brings attention to the fundamentally different approaches that each organization took, 4-H moving towards science and technology, and Girl Scouts attempting to recreate the pre-industrial past. Lastly, it explores the gradation between wild and domestic that existed in both agriculture and nature education in the Progressive Era