140 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



\ iding as liberally for colleges of agriculture as for those of the lib- 

 eral arts and the professions. In this country many of the State 

 universities are indebted largely to their colleges of agriculture for 

 their present liberal support and large attendance of students, and 

 some of them have actually grown within a few years from small 

 land-grant colleges to large State universities. 



The past year has been one of the best in the history of the Ameri- 

 can agricultural colleges. They have had more liberal appropria- 

 tions from their respective legislatures and a larger attendance of 

 students than ever before, and more of them have made provision 

 for reaching the farmer and his wife and children upon the farm 

 through the establishment of extension departments and the mainte- 

 nance of training courses in agriculture for public-school teachers. 

 Such courses were maintained in at least 46 of the agricultural col- 

 leges, and in 22 of them regular four-year courses for teachers were 

 offered. 



The success of the agricultural colleges and their efforts for the 

 development of other educational agencies for the farmer have re- 

 sulted in the very rapid growth recently of secondary schools of agri- 

 culture and of departments of agricultural instruction in public high 

 schools. Several of the States have established complete systems of 

 agricultural high schools, while others have adopted the policy of 

 giving bonuses to existing high schools to encourage the establish- 

 ment and proper support of agricultural instruction. During the 

 year the legislatures in Maryland, New York, North Carolina, and 

 Wisconsin passed laws providing for State aid for such high-school 

 departments, and IMinnesota and Virginia increased the amount of 

 money available for such purposes. Minnesota now provides $2,500 

 for each of 30 high-school departments of agriculture, home eco- 

 nomics, and manual training, and $1,000 for each of 50 other such 

 departments. There are 10 States that give aid for high-school 

 departments of agriculture. 



In an advisory capacity this department is aiding the State author- 

 ities in the promotion of agricultural education b}^ maintaining in the 

 Office of Experiment Stations a small agricultural education service, 

 which studies the various systems of agricultural education, investi- 

 gates methods of teaching agriculture, prepares publications for 

 teachers and others interested in promoting the educational efficiency 

 of the people living in the country, brings the large amounts of new 

 information on agricultural subjects published by the department and 

 the experiment stations to the attention of teachers and students, and 

 in general acts as a clearing house for agricultural education in this 

 countr5\ In this way 22 different States w^ere given special assistance 

 during the year. 



