STATES RELATIONS SERVICE. 569 



the director of that service and the detailed work was intrusted 

 to two offices of extension work transferred from the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry. The office of extension work in the South was 

 given charge of the work in 15 Southern States and the office of 

 extension work in the North and West of the work in 33 Northern 

 and Western States. In addition to work under the Smith-Lever 

 Act, the States Relations Service has administered the direct depart- 

 ment appropriations for farmers' cooperative demonstration work. 

 These funds have been used mainly in the States, but also for the 

 maintenance of the Washington extension offices. 



Among the major problems which necessarily received much 

 attention in the first years after the passage of the Smith-Lever Act 

 were the interpretation of this act as related to the legality of 

 expenditures under it; the establishment of a system for plans of 

 work, budgets, accounting, and reporting; the uniting of the force 

 employed by the department in the South with the college extension 

 forces ; the development on a larger scale of the county agent system 

 in the North and West and the building up of home demonstration 

 and boys' and girls' club work in that region; and the further 

 development of organizations of farming people to support the ex- 

 tension work and participate in it. 



The new plans and methods of work in the department and the 

 States under the Smith-Lever Act and related Federal and State 

 legislation were hardly well established when the entrance of the 

 United States into the World War brought unusual difficulties and 

 a very great expansion of effort. Most of the men engaged in ex- 

 tension work were of military age, many of them had special training 

 which made them unusually useful to the Government in time of war, 

 and their patriotism led them to offer themselves freely for such 

 war service as the Government desired to have them undertake. At 

 the same time the need of greatly increased agricultural production 

 and the conservation of the food supply of the country called for the 

 rapid expansion of the extension forces in order that the farming 

 people might have as much help as possible from the colleges and 

 the department in their efforts to meet these new demands on them 

 at a time when the farm-labor supply was greatly depleted by the 

 withdrawal into the Army and Navy of multitudes of the most vigor- 

 ous men on the farms. Moreover, the Government needed agents 

 in every county to explain to the people its aims in the conduct 

 of the war and the extent of agricultural production and food con- 

 servation required by the war, and to keep itself informed regarding 

 what was going on throughout the country and what measures should 

 be taken to aid the people in their efforts to meet the unusual re- 

 quirements brought about by the war. 



Under the food production act the States Relations Service received 

 $4,348,400 in 1917 and $6,100,000 in 1918. This money was used to 

 supplement the regular Federal, State, and county extension funds 

 in stimulating agricultural production and food conservation. Much 

 of the work under the latter head was done in cooperation with the 

 Food Administration. In other lines of war work there was also 

 much cooperation with the Red Cross, Council of National Defense, 

 War Department, Public Health Service, Fuel Administration, Treas- 

 ury Department (in Liberty loan campaigns), and other agencies. 



