The Bulletin. 77 



and attend your agricultural college for four years in its agricultural course 

 it would tax tlie capacity of this school to its utmost, and the vast majority 

 of the white farmers of this State would pass into the great beyond before 

 they could learn the science of agriculture as it is taught here. A small 

 percentage of the farmers come to the farmers' institutes, and great good 

 has resulted from these institutes. An increasingly larger percentage is con- 

 stantly attending, and the wider you disseminate the information regarding 

 agriculture the more you will increase the attendance at the farmers' insti- 

 tutes. I feel that these institutes are being conducted along better lines than 

 ever before. 



There is a large percentage of the farmers who have not been sufficiently 

 aroused to come to institutes, to get hold of bulletins, or to come to agricul- 

 tural colleges. The best way to get at that problem is to go to the man, to 

 take the knowledge to him instead of waiting for him to seek it ; to establish 

 a system of education for his benefit that will result in showing him how he 

 can get a better production, getting him interested in problems of rotation and 

 soil fertility and farming at a good, substantial profit. Men are employed 

 to go about the counties to conduct upon the farms demonstration work in 

 cooperation with the farmer. The demonstration seeks to teach the farmer 

 some one thing. The demonstration impresses it upon him because he can do 

 a thing with his own hands after having done it once. If six or seven j'ears 

 ago you had told the average farmer of North Carolina that he could produce 

 100 bushels of corn per acre, he would have laughed at you. But to-day 

 there are fewer and fewer who doubt the proposition that large returns may 

 be had for intelligent labor upon these soils. Sometimes it is not easy, in a 

 community that has not been aroused, to get sufficient interest. In such a 

 case as that the first Boys' Corn Club we had In the South was established in 

 1900 in Mississippi. There was just such a condition existing, where the 

 farmer did not believe in book farming ; he thought it was no good, and he 

 would not fool with it. So we started the Boys' Corn Club there, and when 

 the boys doubled the production of corn, there was a considerable awakening 

 in agriculture the next year. 



One of the greatest problems we have in conducting this kind of work is to 

 get the necessary trained men to instruct the farmer. It calls for a man of 

 tact and a man who knows the problems of the farmer and who knows how to 

 farm at a profit. We cannot always get a man of the type that we want. 

 It would be next to impossible to get the type of man that we want for every 

 county. You must realize that what we started out to do was to fight the boll 

 weevil. The boll weevil was coming across Texas, across Louisiana, across 

 Mississippi, and it is now half-way across Alabama. Only that farmer has 

 succeeded in meeting the boll weevil who has changed his plans and now has 

 diversified farming. They gave us the tremendous task of getting the cotton 

 States of the South ready to meet that pest when it should come. 



At the present time one-half the expense of supporting the organization we 

 have in the field is met by the United States farmers' organization, and the 

 other half comes from counties, from States, from agricultural organizations, 

 and from other organizations interested in the education of the Southern 

 farmer. In most of the States, as in this State, we have cooperative relations, 

 and we are seeking to work with every organization working in the field with 

 the farmer. We do not expect now to get the necessary men trained in every 

 line of agriculture to be the local agent. We do not expect the local agent to 

 be a trained veterinarian; we do not expect him to know as much about 

 ground phosphate rock as Dr. Hopkins; we do not expect that he will be as 

 good a plant pathologist as Dr, Galloway ; we do not expect that he will be an 

 expert in marketing; but we do expect that there will be behind him and 

 supporting him in the agricultural colleges and in the experiment stations 

 and in the departments of 'agriculture these men who are devoting their time 

 and services to research in finding out these facts. When the local agent does 

 not know these things, he can send and get this information or get this expert 

 to come and help solve that problem. If cotton wilt is prevalent in a county, 

 it becomes a growing problem and becomes one that the farmer must look after. 

 The local agent should become thoroughly posted on any such problem and 

 should know more about it than any farmer in his county. He should get in 



