International Harvester Offers 100 4-H Scholarships

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The year was 1931. During the International Harvester Luncheon at the Tenth National 4-H Club Congress, the company made a huge announcement. Cyrus McCormick, Jr., Vice President, announced that International Harvester would make a gift of $50,000, the largest ever made by a single organization to further the 4-H movement. The gift would be made in the form of 100 scholarships worth $500. each during the coming year to most outstanding 4-H Club boys and girls in the United States and good in any agricultural college. [$500. in 1931 would be equivalent to nearly $8,000. in 2015.]

The purpose of the award, according to Mr. McCormick, was two-fold – to commemorate the centennial of the invention by his grandfather, Cyrus Hall McCormick, of the first successful grain reaper in 1831 and to contribute substantially to the onward march of scientific agriculture. The scholarships were geographically distributed and a committee of representative club leaders, the chairman of the Committee on Organization and Policy and a representative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, would meet in the offices of the National Committee on Boys and Girls Club Work early the next month to set up the machinery to make it possible for the Extension Service to select the most worthy 100 contestants. The judging committee for the scholarships was announced in April and included: Secretary of Agriculture Arthur M. Hyde, chairman; E. J. Bodman, senior vice president of the Union Trust Company, Little Rock, Arkansas; Carl R. Gray, president of the Union Pacific Railroad, Omaha, Nebraska; Frederick E. Murphy, publisher of the Minneapolis Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Melvin a. Traylor, president of the First National Bank of Chicago, Illinois.

Over the years a number of other major national 4-H donor corporations celebrated special anniversaries by funding special projects, including major events at National 4-H Club Congress, however the International Harvester Company's centennial celebration of 100 4-H scholarships announced in 1931 it is believed is the first such significant celebration of a donor milestone.