46 



When the draft of the law was first discust before the Vansville Hub there was a 

 difference of opinion as to the form which it should assume. Mr. George E. Lowrey 

 made a strong plea for the establishing of a department of agriculture for the State 

 and committing the institute work to it. This was opposed l)y President Silvester, 

 of the Maryland Agricultural College, who maintained that the agricultural interests 

 of the State should be vested in its agricultural college and experiment station. 



The act of legislature finally agreed upon and afterwards enacted is sul)stantially as 

 follows : 



That one institute shall 1)e held each year in each county of the State and an addi- 

 tional one if deemed necessary and desirable. 



That the institutes shall be under the direction of a director apj^ointed by the trus- 

 tees of the Maryland Agricultural College. The salary of the director is to be fi.xt 

 and his duties defined liy the said board. 



That the institute shall be a department of the college and that the salary of the 

 'director and the expense of the institutes shall be paid out of the annual appropriation 

 of 13,000, which the act provid es.a 



Altho this act was not approved until March 27, 189(), there was held at Annapolis, 

 January 14, 1896, under the auspices of the Vansville Farmers' Clul), an institute which 

 was the first farmers' institute, as that term is now understood, held in the State of Mary- 

 land. Since that time the work has expanded until it now extends to every county in 

 the State. 



At a meeting of the board of trustees of the Maryland Agricultural College, held June. 

 1896, William Lee Amoss, of Harford County, Md., who had for nine years acted as secre- 

 tary for the Harford County Farmers' Convention, an offspring of the Montgomery 

 County Convention, was elected director of farmers' institutes under authority of the 

 act of assembly of March 27, 1896. Mr. Amoss is still director of farmers' institutes for the 

 State. 



Farmers' institute work in Maryland has steadily grown in favor, altho at first it was 

 regarded by some of the counties as a doubtful acquisition to the existing system of edu- 

 cation. At present the opposition has been overcome and the institutes are welcomed 

 by the farmers as affording a means of instruction that has been found to be of great serv- 

 ice in aiding them to a better understanding of their art. The high plane on which the 

 work began has never been lowered, but has been fully maintained, and the movement 

 has secured the active cooperation of the leaders in agricultm'e in every county of the 

 State. 



MASSACHUSETTS. 



In telling the story of the farmers' institute movement in Massachusetts justice would 

 not be d(me to the sterling record of that Commonwealth in this line of work if the account 

 did not go back of the actual establishment of the farmers' institutes, denominated as 

 such, and pay some attention to the first stirrings of thought and awakening of effort 

 among the farmers and agricultural organizations of the State. 



At the first meeting of the trustees of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agricul- 

 ture, the fourth agricultural society to be organized in this country, held August 3, 1792, 

 a vote was past recommending that members of the society in different parts of the 

 State should meet from time to time, inviting their neighbors to join them, for consulta- 

 tion and discussions relating to agriculture, with a view to the gathering of information 

 useful in the work of the society. Presumaljly such meetings were held, altho the early 

 records, from the nature of the case, are meager in the extreme, and I can find no con- 

 firmation of that opinion. Certain it is that here was the germ of the farmers' institute 

 rnoveraent and there are but few, if any, earlier recorded expressions of opinion or rec 

 ommendations for action that look toward meetings for agricultural discussion. 



An interesting secondary phase in the development of the movement for agricultural 

 instruction, by lectures and discussions is that of the lectures or addresses on agricultural 



«See (J. S. Dept. Agr., Office of Experiment Stations Bui. 135 (Revised), p. 18, 



