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For instanco, one of oiu- men this past season has been stiidyinR the cropping 

 systems in voyiie in certain i)arts of the coiuitry. He tinds that there are cer- 

 tain farms wliidi are preeminently successful, making hirge sums of money, 

 and he gives especial attention to the cropping systt'ms on those farms, and 

 the methods use<l for maintaining the fertility of the soil. As a result of such 

 study we are ready now in nniny instances to answer the inijuiries of the 

 farmer who writes to us and says, " I am running a little dairy farm in such 

 and such a State and should like some advice about growing feed for my 

 cows." First, we ask him about his soil, and get all the information it is 

 possible to get from him about his conditions and eciuipnient for work. If we 

 do not understand his conditions we send a man to study the situation. Then, 

 after we understand his conditions, in many cases we do not hesitate to fonnu- 

 late a cropping system and tell the dairyman what to grow, how much to grow, 

 and how to feed it ; and we do that. 



Now, I wish that I had time tt) outline to you in full the work of the othce 

 of farm management. I know there is an inipiiry in your minds in regard to 

 it, and 1 am anxious to answer the inquiry as far as I can. And I am anxicms, 

 too, that in this work we shall be heli>ful to you people who are engaged in 

 your own States in scientific investigation. I want to say this, that there is 

 one gap in our system of investigation in this connection. It is one that is 

 being bridged, and one that the office of farm management is intended to bridge. 

 You all know what it meant to teach agriculture before we had experiment 

 stations, or rather you all know it did not mean much of anything. After 

 our experiment stations had been running five years the teaching of agricul- 

 ture began to assume a meaning. That means that these experiment stations 

 have been gathering facts that have a direct relation to the business side of 

 farming. Now we have our experiment stations delving into nature for facts 

 and principles, and getting them. too. The original intention was to get these 

 facts and principles and publish them, and that is the method that has gener- 

 ally been adopted. We have found, as we might perhaps have reasoned out 

 would be the case, that most of the farmers do not get their information by 

 reading, and yet once in a while here and thei'e is found a bright farmer, an 

 educated man, usually one who has studietl and got the lessons we have offered 

 him. The average farmer has not done that at all. and now we need some 

 means of bringing our lesson to the average farmer. 



We must carry this information to the farmer in a way which appreciates 

 the farmer's limitations. Here Professor Duggar and I established a farm. We 

 planned a system of management for that farm. The farmer who owned it 

 followed out the instructions in a very accurate manner. He got results that 

 were astonishhig. even to those of us who had planned the work. We first 

 announced a year ago that we would hold a farmers' institute at this farm. 

 Unfortunately, a slow train prevented me from getting to the institute, but Pro- 

 fessor Duggar was there, and there were a thousand farmers at that institute. 

 The crowd could not be handled, it was so big. This summer we held another 

 institute on this farm, and instead of announcing the fact publicly we sent out 

 150 invitations to selected farmers, and all responded. The meeting was held 

 in a beautiful grove on the farm, where from the platform we could see the 

 hogs in the alfalfa field. Between us and that field the owner of the farm 

 was building a hay barn. Formerly he had bought his hay from Ohio and 

 Indiana and Illinois. Now he was raising more hay than he had ever raised. 

 In my presence a local farmer offered him .$20 a ton for some of that hay. 

 He would not sell it, becavise he would simply have to buy more. 



Those farmers sat with their mouths open for two hours and listened to the 

 discussions of the experience on that farm. That was a farm, and not demon- 



