102 EXPEEIMENT STATION EECORD. 



and devoting his entire time to this work is essential to its highest 

 efficiency. 



In twenty States the farmers' institutes are still carried on by 

 the State Department of Agriculture, though in a number of States 

 there is a movement for their transfer to the agricultural college and 

 this has taken place in South Dakota. In practically all the States 

 where the institutes have a separate organization there is some kind 

 of a cooperation with the agricultural college in this work. AVliere the 

 institutes are under the direction of the college they are undergoing 

 more or less reorganization with a view to making them more 

 definitely demonstrational and educational. 



The plans for the unifying of the management of the agricultural 

 extension enterprises within the States were met by the Secretary of 

 Agriculture, in the first place, by the creation of a States Relations 

 Committee, for the general supervision of all the extension enter- 

 prises of the department bureaus and of the cooperative arrange- 

 ments with the State institutions involving the use of Smith-Lever or 

 department funds for demonstrations or other forms of extension 

 work. This committee has now been succeeded by a permanent 

 States Relations Service, created by Congi-ess in accordance with the 

 Secretary's recommendations, which, beginning with July 1, 1915, 

 will have among its functions the duties previously performed by 

 the States Relations Committee. 



All the State agricultural colleges receiving the benefits of the 

 Smith-Lever Act have entered into cooperative relations with the 

 Department, and in forty-six States these institutions and the Depart- 

 ment are conducting all their extension work in agriculture and home 

 economics under the terms of a general " Memorandum of Under- 

 standing," which is used as the basis for a gi'eat variety of coopera- 

 tive project agreements. 



There has been remarkable unanimity in the acceptance by the 

 States of one of the fundamental features of the extension enterprises 

 which was developed by the Department with funds wholly under its 

 control prior to the passage of the Smith-Lever Act. The experience 

 of the past 12 years has fully demonstrated the value of the county 

 agricultural agent as a means of bringing to our agricultural people 

 on their farms and in their homes the results of practical experience 

 and scientific research in agriculture and home economics and secur- 

 ing the practical application of these results through demonstrations 

 and otherwise. There is therefore general agreement that nothing 

 is more important in the development of extension features under 

 the new conditions arising from the Smith-Lever Act than the estab- 

 lishment in each county of permanent headquarters for extension 



