The Time Has Come

This cartoon appeared in the Winter 1963 issue of Junior Farmer and 4-H Quarterly. It depicts examples of young women coming up with ideas to streamline and spice up their Junior Farmer annual meeting. It’s purpose was to encourage Junior Farmers to “Keep up to date with new ideas.” Ironically, this idea was not new to the Junior Farmers or 4-H Clubs, which were originally founded to make sure that their parent’s farms and local communities were doing just that!

Rural youth community clubs like 4-H and Junior Farmers came about in North America in the early 20th century as an attempt to make public school education more connected to country life. Many such clubs were founded through the initiative of young university-educated men and women who were eager to see their parents and communities adopt the new methods, techniques, and technologies they had learned in the burgeoning fields of agricultural science and home economics. There was a feeling that older farmers were resistant to change, and that only through the initiative of younger generations would important changes be adopted in rural communities. The first Canadian 4-H club was established in 1913 in Roland, Manitoba and quickly spread across the country - although these were called “boys and girls clubs” until 1952. A year later in 1914 the first Junior Farmers clubs were founded in Ontario, beginning a legacy that continues to this day. This cartoon from half-a-century on demonstrates that the founding ideal of keeping up to date with new ideas was still running strong.