No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 267 



ger for twelve to fifteen years, and I am not saying this to tlie detri- 

 ment of the men who were doing it before that. The point I want to 

 make is, are we going uphill or downhill. I think it would be a good 

 thing for all of ns men to show that up. There is an Act of Assembly 

 that says we shall publish when we shall have a meeting in our re- 

 spective counties to receive applications for holding institutes. I sup- 

 posed when I was first elected that I would meet a lot of fellows there 

 and I met myself there a great many times and nobody else; nobody 

 there at all. Now in the last two or three years if I don't go to the 

 Court Plouse at all to hear the applications I would have about three 

 times as many as I could accept, by letter; and for the last two or 

 three years in our county they don't only wait for that but they send 

 a delegation to press, "give us an institute now." I can see it in what 

 little time I have devoted in other counties, comparing it with twelve 

 years ago when you would see a lot of fellows, four or five retired far- 

 mers probably come to the meeting, flat headed fellows that had left 

 the farm. The men that we wanted to reach were not there, as a rule. 

 At night we would have a full house, have to get a big house to ac- 

 commodate them. Most of them came there — it is a place to go to see 

 your best girl and all that sort of thing — but if it was not funny it 

 would not amount to anything. Half the people have no idea in the 

 first place of the institute work, what it was like or its purpose. 1 

 often think about it. I was sent to a certain portion of this State to 

 an institute at one time and, to use the farmer's phrase, I was off in 

 my feed. I played my part of it and went back to the hotel. It was 

 a fairly good community, too. I sat down there and after awhile a 

 gentlemen in the office, a commercial traveler, said to another gentle- 

 men of the same kind who had just come in: "Well, James, where have 

 you been?" "Oh, I was down here to a meeting. I have been travel- 

 ing over this country and every once in a while I see a great deal 

 about the farmers' meeting, a great outpouring of farmers. I had no 

 idea what a farmers' institute wovild be, so 1 had a little leisure and 

 I thought I Avould drop in and see what was doing at the farmers' 

 meeting." ''Well, what is it like?" ''Very poor meeting," he says. 

 "I jifot in there," he says, "and there was a big six foot huckster talk- 

 ing to a lot of people about feeding calves. Don't that beat you?" he 

 said. I think some of our men have as poor an idea of what the pur- 

 pose of our institute is as he had. But I don't want to take up your 

 time, but I want to say that a great deal is in our hands to advertise. 

 We have a blue print of what is to do and it depends a good deal upon 

 the men to work that out. It is not doing Avhat some of us would like 

 to see it do. I had a conversation once with a friend of mine, a minis- 

 ter. He saj'S, "1 have been paying a great deal of attention to farmers' 

 institute work. Is it doing any good?" ''Well, I hope it is; probably 

 not as much as we would like but we are not discouraged in the mat- 

 ter." He said, "I cannot see that it has accomplished anything." I 

 said, "T would like to ask you a question." I said, ''You are a minis- 

 ter of the gospel. Do you convert^ all the people you talk to?" "No." 

 "Do you get discouraged and give up the business then? Don't you 

 put on more stress every evening to impress your people to do what 

 they already know than to give them any other information?" If you 

 can make an impression in any community along your line of work 

 on two or three men who have a good influence it will spread and you 

 will soon see a widespread interest and I hope it will go on. 



