farmers' institutes in the united states. 315 



and business organizations requesting information respecting such 

 forms of agricultural education extension as they might be conducting. 

 Each letter was accompanied by a blank upon which to make out 

 the report and by a franked envelope for transmitting it to the 

 Department. One thousand and one replies were received and 317 

 of them, or about 6 per cent of the entire number addressed, were 

 engaged in some form of extension work. 



The investigation showed not only that there is deep interest on 

 the part of educators everywhere in the agricultural education exten- 

 sion movement, but that there is also a large amount of work of this 

 character now being carried on throughout the country. While no 

 single institution has engaged in all of the lines of agricultural exten- 

 sion activity, yet in the aggregate almost every feature of the agri- 

 cultural industry is recognized by some educational effort in its 

 behalf. 



The correspondence brought into prominence several important 

 facts. The first is, that there is among educators in the higher insti- 

 tutions of learning in all of the States a sincere and deep interest in 

 the success of the movement for imparting agricultural information 

 to the masses. This is particularly true as respects those who are 

 connected with the agricultural colleges of the country. While the 

 amount of extension work which they are doing is considerable, the 

 methods employed are as yet diverse and ill-defined. There has 

 been no agreement among their faculties respecting methods for 

 carrying on extension work, the subjects most needed to be taught 

 or the pedagogic form that the instruction should assume. 



Another important fact was developed. It is the universal appre- 

 ciation by country people of what has been attempted in agricultural 

 education in their behalf. Whether the effort has taken the form 

 of the farmers' institute, the traveling library, school garden and field 

 demonstration work, nature study, agriculture in the pubHc schools, 

 the corn-judging contest, stock judging at county fairs, agricultural 

 Uterature, courses of lectures by college men on agricultural 

 subjects, the railroad special, the dairy expert — all are thoroughly 

 appreciated. Instead of the information thus given satisfying the 

 farmers' desires, the demand is for more and for further sj^stematiz- 

 ing, perfecting, and extending these lines of effort until the informa- 

 tion which is now only fragmentary and disconnected will be sys- 

 tematized so as to become a proper and permanent part of the 

 general system of industrial education. 



A third fact expressed in the communications is the desire on the 

 part of those who are engaged in this extension movement for plans 

 and methods that will enable them to do more effective work along 

 extension lines. Each worker until now has been dependent largely 



