584 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



the Experiment Station and University impulse to the people in 

 such manner that it shall come to them as a living and quicken- 

 ing force, without first studying the fundamental difficulties of 

 the farmers' social and political environment. 



It is not necessary to the present report that I make any 

 discussion of the agricultural status, I may only say that, as 

 the result of the most painstaking study which I have been able 

 to make, I am convinced that there is no agricultural disease. 

 That is, there is no political condition which is peculiar to agri- 

 culture and which can be remedied by legislation. By reason of 

 their inherent conservatism, the agricultural people have not yet 

 adjusted themselves to the recent social and economic move- 

 ments, and they have not fully assimilated the knowledge and 

 impulses of the time; and I am also convinced that grave errors 

 haA'e been committed in forcing the development of w^estern 

 lands. If these general conclusions are sound, then it follows 

 that the solution of our agrarian difficulties is to be sought in 

 better education. By education, I mean literally what I say, — 

 by means of a general waking up, a shaking out of all the old 

 habits of thought, an injection of new conceptions of life, an 

 intellectual stirring up of every rural community. I do not 

 mean the simple giving of information, the cramming in of care- 

 fully assorted facts. We need to shake out the snarls and kinks 

 of i)rejudice and indifference before giving great attention to 

 the dissemination of more direct information. There is already 

 enough popular knowledge of better agricultural methods to 

 greatly improve our rural conditions, if only the farmers would 

 assimilate it and apply it. This knowledge is of little account 

 when it is a mere extraneous possession. It must be worked 

 into the fibre of the man until he is not aware that he 

 possesses it. 



In this extension work, therefore, we have sought not so 

 much for new facts as for some way of driving home the old 

 facts. We have tried to set forces at work which would silently 

 extend themselves when we had left them. Fortunately, we 

 have been greatly aided by the hard times and the multitudes of 



