The cream of the crop of Fairfax County girlhood on a float meant for the Piedmont Dairy Festival parade. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1930, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.
The 4-H Clubs never caught on in Fairfax County to the satisfaction of the home demonstration and agricultural agents. "The past year has not been a banner year for club work," wrote Derr in 1926. "Four clubs were organized ... but the agent is inclined to think that with a number of [members] this was done to be excused from a study period. The small amount of work done on their projects seems to substantiate this belief."[171] The clubs grew slowly partly because they overlapped the work of the Floris Vocational High School and the Future Farmers of America Club, founded in 1927.[172] There is also some evidence that parents were reluctant to release their children from farm work to attend meetings.[173] For those who did join, the meetings seem to have been fun and profitable. "Not only do you learn from 4-H how to make a home and a living," an enthusiastic member commented in 1933, "but you also learn how to make life worthwhile. We now realize more than ever our duties, as the child of today will be the adult of tomorrow."[174]
As is evident in the above quotation, groups such as the 4-H or Future Farmers of America encouraged a child to identify with and improve on rural life. These organizations not only stressed occupational pride, but benefitted the community by training leaders who had early experience with professional farming techniques.
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Aside from the need to influence milk and produce prices, two chief concerns of the farmer's organizations were the establishment of electricity throughout the county and the improvement of the area's roads. The move towards rural electrification was a popular one across the nation, cited continually as the one item most useful to the farmer for advancing mechanization and of greatest importance in raising the farm family's standard of living. With electricity the family could use a radio, rid themselves of smoky kerosene lighting and enjoy the use of more efficient and cleaner stoves and refrigeration. The pragmatic desire for electrical equipment to operate milking machines and water pumps was intensified by advertisements such as one which appeared in the Herndon News-Observer claiming that electricity would make life "convenient and happy" as well as add fifteen to twenty years to the farm woman's life.[175]
Unfortunately, the route to establishing electrical facilities in the county was not an easy one. Some farmers used small gasoline engines to produce power, but these, the "contrariest little machines," were unreliable and frequently too weak to run milking equipment. Derr reported that 98% of the farmers desired this convenience but the expense seemed prohibitive. Commercial electric companies were reluctant to build lines through sparsely settled areas, and the farmers were forced to finance their own power plants. In 1933 the federal government began a program to subsidize local electrification programs and make them financially viable the only drawback being the undue amount of red tape to go through involved in qualifying. "The cost of building new lines was found to range from one thousand to two thousand dollars a mile," stated a discouraged Derr. "We were hardly prepared to be told that the farmers ... must organize a farm cooperative ... borrow the money from the Government and build their own lines to be self-liquidating in twenty years at 3% interest."[176] Difficult as the process seemed, the farmers had little choice if they hoped to electrify their neighborhoods. In this instance, an organization was not only an advantage for success in furthering the community's amenities, but a necessity.
That the Floris community was one of the earlier areas to enjoy the benefits of electrification was a result of great effort on the part of its citizens. A franchise for an electric power plant was granted to Herndon in 1915 but never materialized, and prior to 1924 the nearest generating operation was in Alexandria.[177] A group of farmers from Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, headed by A. S. Harrison, hired an engineer and travelled throughout the Dranesville District to encourage farmers to contribute time and money towards an electrical plant. Eventually they raised enough cash to form a stock company and a power line was built between Alexandria and Herndon, and subsequently on to Leesburg.[178] The initiative shown by the Floris farmers was rewarded by a distinct advantage over non-electrified communities. As late as 1940 over 35% of the county's farms were without electric power. A survey conducted in that year showed these non-electrified areas to be the least productive, and most depressed in morale and way of life.[179]
Water and sanitation systems were also difficult to establish despite concerted efforts by the home demonstration agents. Slightly over 10% of the county's farm homes contained "complete water systems" in 1932, though a larger percentage had partial plumbing facilities. Even in 1940, only 19% of the homes in the Dranesville area (and 40% in the county as a whole) boasted running water. Low as these figures seem, however, they were the highest in the state. Because good water was abundant in the area, farmers saw less need to campaign for extended water mains or sewer lines, in spite of their advantages for health and convenience. It was not until the population boom of World War II that really modern utilities were established in the county on a large scale.[180]
Of greater significance was the effort to better the county's road system. Southern roads in general—and Virginia's in particular—had been notorious since their inception for ruts, abrupt endings and, especially, mud. In 1918 there were only a few miles of surfaced road in Fairfax County, and any roadbuilding or repairs were made at the discretion of individual landowners.[181] The inconveniences caused by the poor roads became legendary. One woman remembered the roads being so rough that eggs would break on the way to market, and another, Emma Millard, stated that conditions were bad enough that "you would lose your boots when you went through so much mud and had to go back and retrieve the boots."[182] When automobiles became more common on the county's thoroughfares, they increased the problem of dust, deeply worn grooves and splashing muddy water. At the same time they pointed up the necessity for improvement. The early solid tire vehicles could barely operate in the thick red Virginia mud, thus greatly retarding transportation of produce and milk. "If you had three drops of rain on the road, [the tires] started spinning and you couldn't go anywhere much without chains," recollected one early farmer. "Every truck carried a set of tire chains in the event it rained. In the summertime if it rained, you stuck right on the first little grade you hit." Not until 1922 did farmers attempt to haul their goods in trucks, and even then they "broke more axles than anything else."[183]
Farmers were acutely aware of the situation and some of their earliest united efforts were focused on road improvement. Records of Farmer's Club #1 show the topic to be the subject of discussion at several meetings a year, beginning in 1909. Initially they tried only to interest the county in undertaking repairs but as conditions worsened, the landowners began to appeal to county judges and the Board of Supervisors for bond issues to surface Little River Turnpike and other main roads. Resolutions, such as the following from a Herndon-based club, were regularly sent to government officials: