home.’’ The slogan was actually an old maxim representing the ideal of
self-sufficiency: Farmers should produce on their own places as many of
their needed commodities as possible, beginning with vegetables, fruits,
grains, and meat. Ironically, before the Civil War, the great bulk of south-
ern farmers, including the poor ones, had already been self-sufficient. Even
slaves had enlarged their welfare with cabin-side gardens, fishing, and
hunting. Then, as we have seen, black southerners began freedom in depen-
dency, and a large proportion of whites gradually slipped into dependency
themselves in the decades after the war. Then came the climax of the long
wars against the commons. After that, among those still farming, came the
age of gasoline and a mass culture of consumption fueled by print and radio
advertising. Rural Americans, in other words, were encouraged to motor off
to town to buy any number of products, even food. It seems likely that hard
times were more effective than county and home demonstration agents in
persuading rural folk once more to try, at least, to live at home.
Women, in particular, succeeded at this and thus saved many family
farms. Responding to demonstration agents’ and others’ initiatives in cre-
ating ‘‘curb markets’’ in towns, farm mothers and daughters sold eggs, but-
ter, garden vegetables, and other produce for cash. At home they enlarged
poultry flocks and increased production to make more money. Some opera-
tions became extensive, with women entrepreneurs sending shipments to
more than one town, even relatively distant ones. The cash these women
made in new markets was often the only money seen by farm families for
years on end. Meanwhile, the chicken and egg business generated another
enterprise. Since more chickens required more feed, women engaged in
markets bought feed from millers, who shipped in bags. Feedbags were
never thrown away but were fashioned into diapers, table linen, aprons,
shirts, skirts, and dresses. Milling companies responded to this market by
offering feedbags in patterns and colors. Some women actually went into
the business of buying and selling bags. Only when men effectively took
away from women the now-lucrative production of chickens and eggs, after
World War II, did these remarkable female rural enterprises disappear.^17
tOnce upon a time, chicken was a treat. Among Christians it was the
centerpiece of Sunday dinner, especially if the preacher were coming. As
early as the s, though, a few urban-based feed and seed sellers devel-
oped means to increase supplies by distributing biddies to hard-pressed
farmers, who would raise them on contract and return the broilers to the
salesman for distribution in city markets. Farmers on the fringes of the