ms ANNUAL REPORT OF TIIK Ofif. Doc. 



or the silent man rather. I believe that you will perfectly agree 

 with me in this respect. You know that if you know anything. But 

 just how to inaugurate the interest of the people is what I think I 

 have partially solved and that is my purpose in coming here and 

 if I am helpful to some new county chairman in some little way, I 

 will feel that my visit to Butler was not an entire failure. 



I will give you my method of conducting a Farmers' Institute. I 

 don't claim that it is ideal, but it works out for me and I imagine 

 that the Director of Institutes, Mr. Martin, had some idea that I 

 had a little success, or he would not have pushed me into this position 

 and got me into this predicauicnt that I am in now. Very shortly, 

 on the second Tuesday in June, we, as County Chairmen, will be 

 called to the offices of the County Commissioners in the various 

 counties throughout the State, there, first to arrange for our insti- 

 tutes; that is, to arrange or select the places where the institutes 

 are to be held. That is all right. You know all that. Now at that 

 meeting we do this: We invariably select a local committeeman at 

 that meeting for each place. Never miss doing that. If you simply 

 just select the places nobody is recognized, your meeting sort of falls 

 flat and the local papers have not much to say. But if you select a 

 local committeeman and chairman, the local x)apers take it up, pub- 

 lish the proceedings and somebody is recognized and interested. 

 After that there is not very much work to do until we commence to 

 arrange for the institutes. About six weeks before the time for 

 holding the institutes I commence to get very busy. I do this: I 

 correspond then with this chairman who was made at the time and 

 places for institutes were named. I make an arrangement to meet 

 him at a certain place, day and the hour named. I have never missed 

 an appointment of that kind. I say to him, now call in your farmers, 

 call in all those who are interested in the success of the Farmers' 

 Institute. And he does so, and I have had as high as twenty, twenty- 

 five and thirty of the live farmers at that preliminary meeting. He 

 also sends out postal cards informing them of the meeting and why 

 they shall come and make arrangements for the Farmers' Institute. 



Now a step backward ! By this time the Department has sent 

 me the posters and the printed matter such as they send out. I 

 have already, pre\dous to this, taken these posters to our local printer 

 and had him very nicely execute and insert suitable type w^here is is 

 necessary, stating the day and place of holding the institute, together 

 with the names of the speakers, all nicely printed in that bill. If I 

 hold four institutes and the Department sends me 100 bills I have 

 2.5 for each place. I tie these up in a little roll and I have a bunch 

 of the Farmers' Institute Bulletins with me, and I go to meet this 

 pre-arranged gathering. I preside there myself, call the meeting to 

 •order and tell them the object of the meeting. I take the Farmers' 

 Institute Bulletins and I say: "Now, here, gentlemen; we have Prof. 

 Lighty, from East Berlin, Adams county. He has five subjects, he 

 has eight subjects, or whatever, and we can select five of them. Now, 

 gentlemen, whatever subjects you want in this particular community 

 you just tell me. This will interest every man. I came here to assist 

 you. They will all get busy and I distribute half-a-dozen Bulletins 

 to these fellows and we all have something to do. We read over 

 these subjects nicely and carefully and pretty soon we are so much 

 interested and they select the subjects and I mark them down. We 



