lina Baptist born in , loved to be reminded that he had once signed
such a pledge, especially as he and my father had a nip before supper.)
The famous South Carolina ‘‘Dispensary’’ of the s was an early at-
tempt to substitute a state agency for too-influential private distributors
of liquor. Ultimately, though, every southern state abolished the saloon—
first, usually, in county local-option elections, and then in what were usually
raucous statewide referenda. The entire region was ‘‘dry’’ before the United
States entered World War I, and southerners were essential in pushing na-
tional prohibition down the throats of northeasterners.
The reform of public entertainments such as circuses and especially
county and state fairs proceeded apace, too. Localities, sometimes states,
attempted to prohibit fraud, gambling, and nudity in traveling circuses
and at least put show companies on the defensive. Fairs, being county-
and state-sanctioned institutions, were more successfully restructured.
Here again, evangelical forces were allied with emergent professions, in
this case county agents employed by foundations and states and then
(after ) the federal government, to demonstrate scientific agronomy to
farmers. The addition of female home demonstration agents hugely com-
plemented the corps of reformers dedicated to extending home and church
to public venues. Early on, the agents promoted boys’ corn clubs, cells of
minor agronomy students who eagerly submitted to supervised produc-
tion contests, as well as a variety of girls’ clubs and especially the -H rural
youth movement. Fairs became the annual summer celebration of modern
achievements of many sorts: for male farmers, the display of prizewinning
crop samples and livestock; for their wives, demonstrations of superior
cooking, home crafts, and dairy production; and for children, the junior
versions of the above. By the s, fairs local and statewide were utterly
committed to ‘‘progressive’’ farmers and their families. The lurid became
rare, and even where horse racing still took place, it seems to have been
(relatively) sober and well regulated.
In the parallel universe of the black South, county and home demon-
stration agents, along with supportive institutions such as churches and
especially the colleges, pursued similar agenda at separate fairs and con-
ferences. A noble and long-term program called Ham and Eggs was closely
associated with Fort Valley State College in Georgia. Agents and their allied
teachers and preachers promoted the propagation, sharing, and coopera-
tive distribution of hogs and chickens. A patron might begin with donation
of a boar and sow or rooster and hen to a worthy family, with the obligation
to present a portion of litters to another family, and so on. In such a man-