80 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan.^ 



eight hundred. Those people come to the farmers' institute 

 because it is advertised as thoroughly and as well as a circus 

 would be. New York State is pretty well advertised. Mas- 

 sachusetts is very well advertised. Massachusetts arranges 

 its institutes so that every agricultural society shall hold 

 three, and the list of speakers is sent to those societies and 

 they pick out whoever they want, and then they do the local 

 advertising. Sometimes the meeting is well advertised and 

 they get a good audience, and sometimes it is scarcely adver- 

 tised at all, and the audience is small in consequence. 



In our own State — you asked me to say a word about it, 

 Mr. Chairman, and I think the President of the Board will 

 excuse me for making what I believe is an honest criticism — 

 in our own State there has not been any system whatever, 

 or practically none. There has been no plan mapped out 

 and no systematic plans followed out for holding institutes. 

 Never, so far as outsiders are concerned, has there been any 

 systematic plan carried out for holding these meetings. I 

 believe there has been a committee on institutes, and if some- 

 body wanted you to hold a meeting somewhere, why a meet- 

 ing has been arranged. And then another trouble has been, 

 instead of having Prof. Jenkins or Prof. Somebody-else ad- 

 vertised to speak, it has been reported that they were expected 

 to be there, and some of them have got there and some of 

 them have not. So that, while there has been a reasonable 

 number of institutes held, I think there has been no sys- 

 tematic plan, no carefully-worked-out plan, for carrying 

 them on. 



I say this, of course, only from general observation. 



Now, Brother Collingwood made a criticism that he 

 wanted only practical men to go out. He said that he did 

 not want any theorists. He said that he wanted only prac- 

 tical men and practical farmers to go out and talk to the 

 people. Do you realize that he publishes a newspaper which 

 is one of the best agricultural newspapers in the State where 



