404 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



touch with the farmers, teachers, and pupils in the rural communities. 

 State and county superintendents of public instruction reported some 

 form of extension teaching in one hundred and twenty-three cases, 

 representing a great variet}' of forms ; and seventeen State and local 

 libraries reported that they maintain traveling libraries, lectures, 

 lecture bureaus, etc., for agricultural subjects. 



Commenting on the enormous amount of extension work which the 

 exjoeriment stations are doing, not only through their printed bulle- 

 tins and the mass of corresi^ondence of station officials, but also 

 through demonstrations, lectures, and many other lines of effort, the 

 committee asks " Why should the experiment station longer burden 

 itself with extension teaching? Why should it not turn over all of 

 the duties just enumerated to other hands and thus free itself in time, 

 in -money, and in energy, for concentration upon the gigantic prob- 

 lems of genuine research?" The obvious answer to this inquiry is 

 the lack of other agencies with the organization and funds to meet 

 the demands for this outside work, and the feeling of responsibility 

 resting on station officers that their work must be adequately placed 

 before the farmers, and that they must serve their interests in vari- 

 ous ways. The stations probably feel the pressure for this assistance 

 more keenly than any other agencv, unless it be the farmers' insti- 

 tutes, for they are in such close touch with the farmers and their 

 special needs. But there is no question that they would welcome de- 

 partments equipped for this sjDecial object and working in close coop- 

 eration with them. 



The committee emphasized the desirability of concentrating, coordi- 

 nating, and systematizing the extension teaching in connection with 

 the land-grant colleges, and of developing the more important aspects 

 of it. It recommended that each college should organize as soon as 

 practicable a department of extension teaching in agriculture, coordi- 

 nate with other departments or divisions of the agricultural work, 

 with a competent director in charge, and. if possible, Avitli a corps 

 of men at his disposal; and failing this, that it appoint a faculty 

 committee on extension teaching in agriculture, to consider methods 

 and all matters relating to this subject, and especially the feasibility 

 of organizing definitely a department of college extension. 



The report points out that " nearly all the institutions are feeling 

 their way. The scattered nature and unorganized character of the 

 work are obvious and significant. Only a few institutions have or- 

 ganized de})artments of extension teaching. The work thus far has 

 grown out of the needs of the farmers and the desire of the younger 

 institutions to win the regard of the farmers as well as to instruct 

 them." And it adds that these efi'orts " have been seriously limited 

 by the financial resources at hand and the small amount of time at 

 the disposal of the employees of the institutions." 



