262 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



vancement. Lancaster county had 14,685 people in attendance ; at all 

 their sessions. Then the next count}' is York, with 11,715; then the 

 County of Tioga, 7,180; Schuyllcill, 4,785; of Montgomery, 5,560; In- 

 diana, 4,485; Dauphin, 4,7U0 ; Chester, 5,265; and liie County of Brad- 

 ford, 4,225; and of Berlcs, 4,083. The counties that 1 have enumerated 

 are those liaving the largest attendance. Mow when 1 say the largest 

 attendance 1 don't want to be understood as saying that they gave 

 the hirgest attendance in proportion to their number of farms or popu- 

 lation. You know that there are some counties in l*ennsylvania with 

 a popuhitiou of but a very few thousand that have given an attendance 

 practically eipml to the number of farms; that is, proportionately 

 ecjual to the others, and in some cases excelling, in proportion to the 

 number of farms in that county, by considerable. Thus you see we are 

 only enumerating this great attendance as phenomenal, but if we were 

 to analyze this attendance we would possibly develop the fact that in 

 some of those counties which have only two and three day sessions the 

 attendance in proportion to the population would be greater than 

 Lancaster county. 



Y'ou are possibly interested in some of the subdivisions of the work, 

 and hence we have some data here that ought to be of interest to you. 

 These meetings have been divided into some four subdivisions. We 

 have what is known as the Special Instil ute. These Special Institutes 

 have grown up within the last two or three years, in which the far- 

 mers' organizations, the farmers' unions, farmers' clubs, local granges, 

 in different parts of the State are exceedingly anxious to procure in- 

 structors along a certain line of farm operations. A correspondence 

 is developed with the Department through which we send to these 

 various localities one or two instructors, joining with the locality in 

 the development of this work, and hence we call these meetings Spe- 

 cial Institutes, joining with the local people both in the development 

 of their community and their institutes in this direction. Now there 

 were in attendance at these Special Institutes last year 10,376. At the 

 Regular Institutes, the institutes that have been scheduled regularly 

 in our bulletin, the attendance was 162,809. Then we have still an- 

 other division of this work that is rapidly developing in Pennsylvania, 

 and of no mean importance, I refer to Harvest Home Picnics. You 

 know one of the grandest things and probably one of the best organi- 

 zations that we have in Pennsylvania for developing the social side of 

 farm life are these Harvest Home Picnics. There the farmer and his 

 wife, sons and daughters, the young and the old people of the terri- 

 tory, coming from miles and miles, assemble together out in some 

 beautiful grove, and in lieu of spending that time in amusements that 

 would be worthless and unprofitable they have invited the Department 

 to join with them and send lecturers in order to devote at least two 

 hours of the day to the development of the great work upon their 

 farms, and we join Avith them in that work and so far as means and 

 speakers are available we have afforded the same, and at these Harvest 

 Home meetings last year our speakers addressed over 20,000 people. 

 There is also another division of the Farmers' Institute work that I 

 will refer to and that is what is known as our Movable Institute 

 Schools. These Movable Schools Avere held last year in the following 

 counties: Potter, Warren, York, Lackawanna, Columbia, Venango, 

 Erie, Crawford, Westmoreland, Chester and Lehigh. I stop for a 

 moment for a word in reference to these Movable Schools. No one of 



