No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 267 



things in your farmers' institutes, but if you can't get the farmers 

 there, then you are not getting the real benefit you ought. How 

 shall ge get them there? What shall we do to induce them to at- 

 tend? That is the question, and as I said before, at first I was very 

 much discouraged when I found that the farmers in my county were 

 not inclined to take advantage of these farmers' institutes, and these 

 lecturers that are being provided; in fact, when I would inquire of 

 the farmers why they didn't come to the meeting, they would say 

 to me in reply: "What do they know about farming, anyhow? They 

 never got behind a plow and plowed; all this book learning is well 

 enough on paper and well enough to tell about." So, as I said I was 

 very much discouraged. I didn't want to stand up there and spend 

 all this money and time and have only a few come out. 



Now you can't always drive a horse or any other animal to water 

 and make him drink, but sometimes you can coax him, a little coax- 

 ing, a little tact will bring him around, so I thought I would intro- 

 duce something like that. I have been sending out these circulars 

 to the farmers, as well as the postal cards. The last week before 

 the meeting, I would write to every farmer three letters during that 

 week, three postal cards or letters, and ask each one to come, and 

 it occurred to me in my effort to increase the attendance, that I would 

 do a little coaxing and devise some new method to interest them, 

 so I hit upon a plan and I offered prizes of a barrel of flour, a half 

 a barrel of flour, a ham and a pig for each day, what I called an at- 

 tendance prize. Now, you know, some people who can get something 

 for nothing, they will always be on hand, and if there is a little 

 lottery connected with it, you will find them all flocking there. If 

 there is a raffle in towu, they will go down to the raffle, because 

 there is a chance there of getting something for nothing. We didn't 

 even charge for admission. We simply offered these prizes. Every 

 person entering the hall or the room — we held our meetings in the 

 Court House — was given a ticket with a number on it. If he came 

 in the morning he got a ticket; if he came in the afternoon he got a 

 ticket, and if he came in the evening he got one. If he was there the 

 whole three sessions of the day, he got three tickets. At the end 

 of the session, in the evening, after all was through, I put a lot of 

 slips in a cigar box according to the number of tickets given out 

 during the day. If there were fifty tickets given out to-day, we put 

 in fifty slips in the cigar box. If there were seventy-five given out, 

 we put in seventy-five. If there were a hundred and fifty given out, 

 we put a hundred and fifty in the box, etc. We shook all these 

 tickets up, and then we had the drawing, and the first ticket that 

 came out got the barrel of flour. Whoever had that ticket got that 

 prize. The second ticket that came out got the half-barrel of flour. 

 The holder of the third ticket got the ham, and the holder of the 



