Jessie Young and the Radio Homemakers

A brief history of Radio Homemaking

Radio homemaking began in 1926 and lasted until 1970s/80s
Women hosted their own shows about life at home, included recipes and advice, and offered little glimpses of their home life
Began with two radio stations in Shenandoah, Iowa, begun by seed manufacturers Earl May (KMA) and Henry Field (KFNF)
Radio homemakers were paid a living wage:

Laura Driftmeir made $780 in 1940, or $15,600 in today’s money
$1144 in 1946, or $18,400 in today’s money
Jessie Young made $1400 in 1942, or almost $27,000 today
$3600 in 1941, or almost $77,000
This money also paid for cookie supplies–baked for visitors

Radio homemakers were entrepreneurs

Many radio homemakers had their own newsletters/magazines, which they wrote and printed themselves. Many had national followings, sending tens of thousands of issues each month

Radio homemaking was immensely popular in the Midwest and beyond and brought in hundreds of dollars each week in advertising
Fun facts: Early May and Henry Fields each placed in the “World’s Most Popular Radio Announcer” by Radio Digest (publication). Field won second in 1925 and May won first in 1926. This was because AM signals went far…and there was little competition.
Jessie Young was the first popular radio homemaker (Mamie Miller had a show around the same time)
Radio homemakers differed from the home economists

Presented themselves as peers, not as experts
Often included reader letters, suggestions, and recipes in their shows and magazines

Radio homemakers (WOMEN) had the chance to be on the radio for a few reasons

Radio was big business. The May seed company added 1 million mailing list subscribers in the year they started KMA. KFNF brought in $1200 each month in 1927, which is about $20,000 in today’s money
Radio station owners were required to run a full program by government regulations
Earl May and Henry Fields both valued, encouraged, and recruited women to work at their stations
Doris Murphy who held many positions at KMA also actively recruited and encouraged women to work in radio

What radio homemaking was like:

Hosts would prepare each show, gathering letters, recipes, bits of advice
Prepare advertisements by testing products and writing copy. Some hosts even went to companies to interview makers about their products.
Go on air–many had microphones at home. Often did this with children–no affordable childcare in Shenandoah, Iowa in 1926
Host visitors who came through, sometimes by the busload (one host had her living room carpet replaced by Earl May because it was worn thin by visitors), including baking them homemade cookies and buying soft drinks
Organize and run Jubilee/Homemaker Days once per month, which were big live events that drew crowds of 1000
Read and respond (on air or often in a newsletter) to hundreds of letters each day (Jessie Young received 3000-4000 letters per week)

Radio homemakers were popular from the beginning, growing through the 1940s
1946: National survey found home ec programs, including radio homemakers’ shows, ranked third after disk jockey (music) programs and the musical clock/wake up program.
By late 1940s, radio homemaker shows were everywhere
Very popular into the 1950s, too
Betty Crocker was a fabricated radio homemaker created by General Mills. “She” received 4000 letters each day

Jessie Young’s life

Jessie Susanka was born on Feb. 7, 1900 in Essex, Iowa to Rose Cuhel Susanka and George Susanka.
Her mother, Rose, was the youngest daughter of an immigrant from the Czech Republic, last name Cuhel. Her father was quite poor and Rose had to work from the age of seven
Jessie also had to work from a young age after her father left the family. The family worked together doing things like laundry and baking to support themselves. Jessie also sold things magazines, books, bluing (laundry chemical) and her mother’s baked goods to contribute
Two different sources: one says graduated, other says never did, but after high school, Jessie moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, seven miles south, and began working at the Henry Field seed company

Fun Henry Field story: he started investing in seeds at the age of 8 when he bought a bunch of pansy seeds and his first customer was his aunt

There Jessie met and married Floyd Young
Both began to work at a bank in town, and Jessie eventually became head bookkeeper there.
Stock market crashed and the bank closed
The day that she lost her job, she walked down the street and ran into Earl May. He asked her what she would do and she said she didn’t know, she had lost her job. He told her to come to KMA
Jessie and her husband had been part of early broadcasts by KMA–they had been in the very first one, which was actually from Omaha
They were singers in the church choir
Jessie Young began broadcasting her radio homemaker show. It had many names: Stitch & Chat, A Visit with Jessie Young
Content always included little bits about her life, sometimes her children would wander in while she was recording on Saturdays
Immensely popular
Moved to Philadelphia for a year and broadcasted there, then moved back to Nebraska and broadcasted from Lincoln
When she returned, ads in paper: Good News, Jessie Young is Back! And Jessie Young is BACK!!
Jessie Young broadcasted from Red Feathers, CO, in the summer in the 1940s. She recorded tapes. Listeners complained that they couldn’t hear her as well when she was in CO
Young got so much mail while she was there that Red Feathers had to begin daily mail service
Did not work from a script.
Included 12-13 commercials in each hour long program
Quote: “I sold cosmetics, roses, fish, prunes, horse collars, harnesses, jackets, boots, jam, tires, blankets, and dress goods. But I never sold anything I didn’t believe in. Listeners can tell right away if someone isn’t being honest with them.”
Started her own magazine in 1946–friend and fellow radio homemaker Leanna Driftmier (Henry Field’s sister) told her to–she ran the super popular Kitchen Klatter magazine
Stopped broadcasting in 1955
Young’s magazine ran until 1980 and she did all of the work with her son, except for some part-time help with mailing (according to a newspaper article)
Magazine had 10,000 subscribers and went to all 50 states in 1971
Also published 20 cookbooks and sewing books
After summering in Colorado, she moved there permanently in 1966 and ran Young’s Outpost, a shop and cafe, with her children
Died on Sept. 12, 1987
Highlight of her enduring popularity: she went back to Shenandoah in 1975 for a 50th anniversary celebration of KMA and she was interviewed on air by Warren Nielson. The interview was supposed to be 15 minutes long, but it ran 45 minutes and two programs had to be canceled for it that day.
Quote: “When I started, women were home and radio was something new”
Radio homemaking was a unique moment for women, especially rural women, at this time period.

Significance for women

Improved lives of listeners
Practically: Publicity memo from 1940: people who can “afford electricity but cannot afford electric refrigerators benefit from the program because Jessie gave “frequent recipes for canning and smoking meats,” for example
Offered friendship/kinship to isolated women. A big source for this was a master’s thesis called Sisters of the Skillet by Lori Lynn Rohlk. In her introduction, she shares some sad letters that one of the radio homemakers received from a woman who was abused by her husband. For this woman, writing to the radio homemaker offered solace and the host tried to help her by writing her back
Women, especially rural women, were limited in this time period. Physically and by laws and social norms/expectations
Radio homemaking offered community to listeners
Improved lives of radio homemakers: offered a decent wage, did not come with stigma as other wage jobs for women did, was interesting work, allowed them control over their own finances (via newsletter subscriptions, eg)
I think that the way that they presented their knowledge, as part of an ongoing participatory project, where other women wrote in and shared ideas, is a rare example of homemaking and women’s work being discussed in a public place (the radio–anyone can listen). Different from the home ec movement which was “modernizing” homemaking and feels like it belittles the user knowledge that radio homemakers put on air
It also showed the consumer power of women. Shows brought in hundreds of dollars each week from advertising, so this was a win for radio stations, also. They wanted more radio homemakers

Fun parallels to podcasting

Not uncommon for businesses to own a radio station. Sears & Roebuck owned a station in Chicago called WLS: World’s Largest Store
In the case of KMA and KFNF, these each became their own companies, kind of spun off
Newsletters by radio homemaker hosts. Jessie Young said in a newspaper article she had an unbroken record of subscriptions–sent one each month from inception
Also the aspect of working and broadcasting while your children around reminded me of mommy blogging (more of a negative association–women are only valued for public extensions of what is viewed as their natural/traditional role as mothers)
While reading about preparing for their shows I felt like I was one of them preparing for this show

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Resources

Two for the Road by Jane & Michael Stern (affiliate link - we earn a small commission if you shop via this link)

Red Feather Historical Society: https://redfeatherhistoricalsociety.org/local-histories/personal-histories/jessie-s-young/

“In today’s money” calculator:

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1948?amount=600

Neighboring on the Air: Cooking with the KMA Radio Homemakers by Eleanor Birkby

https://books.google.com/books?id=dzr9hGR_57cC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=jessie+young+lazy+daisy+cake&source=bl&ots=ip1XYcD9CB&sig=ACfU3U06ZHEtU_Bks5nZDeVt5o_DeB2mzw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj81r2Zj72EAxXwEFkFHcLxCfA4ChDoAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=jessie%20young%20lazy%20daisy%20cake&f=false