In this book, Mary Hoffschwelle shines a much-needed light on the efforts of rural reformers. She focuses on Tennessee because its varied geography and the large number of rural reform programs it hosted make it a particularly rich subject for study. Also, the state typified the burdens of poverty and racial division that characterized the South as a whole, and, as the author shows, such problems attracted considerable attention from reformers.

Since reformers regarded education as the key remedy for many southern ills, including its economic and racial difficulties, Hoffschwelle pays close attention to the efforts to rebuild, sanitize, and prettify country schools in Tennessee, both for black and white students. She examines school architecture and planning as well as the ways in which schools were organized and consolidated.

She also considers how home economics programs were designed as a bridge between home and school life and thus shows how education reforms were extended into the domestic realm. In her closing chapters, she addresses the role of home demonstration programs in domestic reform and traces reformers' efforts to expand the "consumer ethic" of rural women.