ABSTRACT
Rosenwald deeply believed in the need to develop the competence, productivity, and income of what was then still a desperately poor and backward American farmer whose skill and productivity were well below that of the competent farmers of western Europe. 3 Rosenwald saw the need to make effective the enormous funds of scientific farming knowledge and farming skills which decades of systematic study of agronomy and farm marketing had brought together but which, in 1900 or 1910, were still largely theory rather than practice, and inaccessible to all but a tiny minority of large and wealthy agriculturalists. 4 His motives clearly were "philanthropic," that is the love of his fellow men. But Rosenwald also saw, as no businessman, American or European, had seen before, that Sears Roebuck's prosperity depended on the prosperity of its customer, the farmer, which in tum depended on the farmer's skill, productivity, and competence. The county farm agent-and Sears Roebuck for almost a decade single-handedly supported this innovation of Rosenwald's until the U.S. Government finally took it over-and the 4-H Club were clearly "philanthrophy." But they were also Sears Roebuck's "corporate advertising," "public relations," and above all market and customer development. Their success explains in large measure why the near-bankrupt Sears Roebuck Rosenwald had bought became within ten years the first of the country's truly national retailers, the biggest of the world's great merchants, and one of the country's most profitable and fastest-growing enterprises. The Sears catalogue became the nation's "wish book" and, with the Bible, the only reading matter in countless American homes.
