HIST 480K Binghamton's Business

“I Have a War Job Right in My Kitchen”: The Canning Caravan and Economic Nationalism

by James Allan

Broome County Canning Caravan

This is a picture of the Canning Caravan. This picture is part of a larger War Council Activities collection arranged by the New York State Archives. Staffed by a Home Bureau representative and female volunteers of all ages, the Caravan would give public demonstrations of the latest canning techniques around Broome County in order to preserve food for the war effort.

The Broome County Canning Caravan held a demonstration of the latest canning technologies at St. Paul's Methodist Church in Endicott on a warm July evening in 1943, around the height of World War II. The 50 women in attendance learned about pressure cooker canning, boiling water bath canning and oven canning from Mrs. Katherine Doyle, an expert in the field of home making and the official Broome County Home Bureau demonstrator.

World War II was an opportunity for societal reorganization for the federal government. The US had just entered into a total war, requiring the mobilization of every sector of society, including food production and preservation. To the US federal government, which needed a large civilian contribution to the war effort, framed the war as a war of ideas, a high-stakes confrontation between democracy and fascism. Therefore, World War II was more than just a war on in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific. War councils were created throughout the nation based off of a model created by the US Department of Civilian Defense. The New York State War Council, along with local war councils at the county and city level, coordinated war-related efforts necessary to ensure State and national defense. 
 

"Fifty Women Attend Village First Demonstration of County's Canning Caravan"

This is a newspaper headline printed in the Endicott Daily Bulletin, covering the Caravan's first demonstration in the Triple Cities area. The Caravan would give demonstrations at community centers and highly visible parts of town, like St. Paul's Methodist Church. The Caravan toured Binghamton, Endicott and Johnson City during the summer of 1943.

The Canning Caravan was a project created by the Broome County War Nutrition Committee to encourage canning throughout Broome County. The Caravan distributed informational and instructional pamphlets and gave public demonstrations to update the public on the latest technology. While quite common in content (local war nutrition committees were established across the nation), the Caravan was quite unique in its form (the actual caravan made the demonstrations widely accessible). As seen in the photograph above, the Caravan was mobile, an actual caravan that was towed to different locations. According to both federal agencies (like the US Department of Home Economics) and local war councils (like the Canning Caravan) argued that domestic canning would ensure food security at home and allow commercially canned foods to be exported to allies and troops. 

Research Question: What effect did the Canning Caravan have on food preservation and support for the war effort in Broome County?

"'I have a war job right in my kitchen!'"

An advertisement in the Endicott Daily Bulletin utilizes the voice of a fictional homemaker priding herself on canning, explaining “the way I feel about it is it’s patriotic”.  Gardening and canning were not hobbies but “pretty important war job[s] right in my kitchen”.

Attendance at the Caravan demonstrations were not impressive to say the least. The Caravan did not attract a crowd larger than 50 people (the demonstration mentioned above that took place at St. Paul's Methodist Church netted 50 attendees). This was concluded after reviewing newspaper coverage of dozens of public demonstrations during the Caravan's time in the Triple Cities Area. This could be explained by the widespread popularity of canning that already existed when the Caravan was created. According to historian Amy Bentley, "In the summer of 1942, when the government first stressed canning as a war obligation, surveys showed that 64% of American women canned food for their family's use". Canning was a widely used food preservation technique for the lower class throughout Broome County and the entire US as a way to save money. Additionally, World War I food preservation campaigns helped popularize canning about twenty years earlier. The attendance of canning classes held in Baltimore, Maryland during the same summers help illustrate the that canning was a widely-held way to preserve fruit and vegetables. The local war nutrition committee planned for a maximum of 18,000 housewives for canning courses held at canning centers throughout the county in 194 and 1944. The amount of people who registered was way below that expectation (1,338 registrations in 1943 and 260 in 1944) and the amount that actually attended the classes was even lower (929 in attendance in 1943 and 20 in 1944). The most highly cited reason for people's disinterest or absence from the local canning courses in Baltimore was people already knew how to can. While Baltimore and Binghamton are not identical by any means, the laughable number of women in attendance provides context for the widespread popularity of canning throughout the United States, Broome County included. 

Maine Central Girls Informed About Canning

This is a short newspaper clipping in the Endicott Daily Bulletin covering a demonstration at Maine Central High School. Many of the demonstrations included captive audiences, or places where people were required to attend. This demonstration at Maine Central, for example, took place during an assembly at school. The presentation consisted of the distribution of canning how-to cards, a tour of the Caravan itself, and a short informational video about the canning process. 

The Canning Caravan served a more symbolic or performative purpose rather than a practical end, instilling a sense of consumer patriotism in domestic canners and ensuring home front support for the ever-demanding war effort. The Canning Caravan helped build enthusiasm for the war effort by ensuring everyone, even those canning food in their kitchens after work, felt they were making a meaningful contribution to the United States' fight for freedom. The Canning Caravan made individuals who volunteered for the Canning Corps, who attended demonstrations, and who canned fruits and vegetables feel like they were part of a fight for American democracy, something bigger than themselves. The Caravan demonstrations aimed to convince those in attendance that different consumer choices, foregoing that can of corn in the super market in favor of canning for oneself, could meaningfully contribute to the war effort and secure the end to fascism around the globe. The Canning Caravan, in actuality, most likely didn't revolutionize domestic canning in Broome County as demonstration attendance was usually pretty low because most people already knew how to can. Instead of being interpreted as serving a material function, the Canning Caravan should be studied and understood as a performance of patriotism, allowing people who already can and those who volunteer for the Canning Corps to identify with and participate in a sense of general unity. 

Students of history should understand that under contemporary capitalism, individual consumer choice, whether in hopes of bringing about an end to fascism, or an end to meat-consumption, or an end to pesticide use, largely don't accumulate in a significant fashion. Focusing on making the 'right" choices at the supermarket detracts from criticism, reform or change at the institutional level or the supply side of the economic relationship between producer and consumer. The next time someone tries to convince you that your purchase can save the world, ask yourself "is there a collective, socio-political solution to these problem that we are not considering?"

Works Cited

Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1998. 

Hartzell, Karl and Daniel Linke. "New York State and World War II: Preserving the Record." New York History, Vol. 73, No. 3 (July 1992): 321-334. 

Nickols, Sharon, Elizabeth Andress, Gina Peek and Sharon NIckols-Richardson. "Seeking Food Security: Environmental Factors Influencing Home Food Preservation and Wellness, Part I: 1910-1959." Family & Consumer Sciences Research Journal, vol. 39, No. 2 (Decembr 2010): 1-27.

Broome County, Victory Canning Caravan (photographs of War Council Agency Activities, ca. 1942-1945, New York Sate War Council), New York State Archives, http://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/10629#. 

"Maine Central Girls Informed About Canning", Endicott Daily Bulletin, June 16, 1944, 6. The Digital Archives of George F. Johnson Memorial Library.  http://endicott.advantage-preservation.com/Viewer/?k=canning%20caravan&i=f&d=01011855-12311960&m=between&fn=endicott_daily_bulletin_usa_new_york_endicott_19440616_english_6&df=1&dt=10

"'I have a war job right in my kitchen'", Endicott Daily Bulletin, June 24, 1943, 9. The Digital Archives of George F. Johnson Memorial Library. http://endicott.advantage-preservation.com/Viewer/?k=canning%20caravan&i=f&d=01011855-12311960&m=between&fn=endicott_daily_bulletin_usa_new_york_endicott_19430624_english_9&df=1&dt=10.

"Fifty Women Attend First Village Demonstration of County's Canning Caravan", Endicott Daily Bulletin, June 16th, 1944, 3. The Digital Archives of George F. Johnson Memorial Library. http://endicott.advantage-preservation.com/Viewer/?k=canning%20caravan&i=f&d=01011855-12311960&m=between&fn=endicott_daily_bulletin_usa_new_york_endicott_19430720_english_3&df=1&dt=10.

US Office of Civilian Defense, Civilian War Services: An Operating Guide for Local Defense Councils (Washington DC: OCD Publications 3626, 1943), 24, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112101585237;view=1up;seq=4.