Marjorie Husted

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the daughter of Sampson Child and his wife, Alice, she studied home economics and German at the University of Minnesota where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. She graduated in 1913 and returned to the university for a degree in education. She first worked as a secretary at the Infant Welfare Society of Minneapolis, and then at the Red Cross during World War I. After the war she belonged to the Women's Cooperative Alliance. In 1923 she became supervisor of promotional advertising and merchandising for the Creamette Company. ==General Mills==

Home Service department (before 1929) In 1924, she went to work as a field representative in home economics for the Washburn–Crosby Company which four years later became General Mills. whom General Mills had invented in 1921. The department was renamed the Betty Crocker Homemaking Service in 1929, with forty staff members and Husted as director. ==Betty Crocker==

For the next few decades Husted worked to make Betty Crocker an empire. She turned Betty Crocker into a radio and television star, a newspaper columnist, and a book and pamphlet author, who sold food and eventually silverware and small appliances. After some time, at the General Mills president's directive, when visitors to General Mills met Husted, she was introduced as Betty Crocker. ==Radio, retirement==

received 4,000 letters a day asking for homemaking help. Each week, Crocker received an average of four to five marriage proposals. From its debut in 1924, with Home Service's Blanche Ingersoll as Betty, until 1953, Gold Medal Flour Home Service Talks, Husted wrote all of Betty Crocker's scripts for the cooking school show but she played a larger role in expanding Betty Crocker's character. She interviewed "eligible bachelors" and visited movie stars like Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and Cary Grant to ask them about their life at home. Shapiro says, "Under her direction, Betty Crocker became a figure of dignity who treated homemakers with respect." Husted strove to make Crocker appear to be a home economist with professional experience, not a home cook. In 1946, Husted was named a consultant to the officers and executives of General Mills. In 1948 she was made consultant in advertising, public relations, and home service. Husted researched and published ''Betty Crocker's Good and Easy Cookbook'' in 1950, which sold 18 million copies, and ultimately the Betty Crocker cookbooks numbered about 50 titles that sold 45 million copies. She retired from the company in 1950 when she formed the consultancy Marjorie Child Husted and Associates. ==Gender discrimination==

In 1951, in a speech to the American Association of University Women, Husted said, "Management is dominated by men and there is no indication of interest on the part of employers for change." When she retired, she earned about one-fourth the salary of their top salesman, even though General Mills executives told Husted she had done more for the company's sales than any other person. ==Awards and honors==

In 1948, President Truman presented the Woman of the Year award of the Women's National Press Club to six women including Husted. Also in 1948, Husted was a consultant for the national food conservation program of the United States Department of Agriculture. Husted was named Advertising Woman of the Year in 1949 by the Advertising Federation of America. That year she served on the AAUW Committee on the Status of Women and helped research and edit selected AAUW publications until about 1955. ==Notes==