2 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



cussion of administrative questions relating to the new work, its 

 opportunities, its responsibilities, and its affiliations naturally found 

 a place in the various other meetings. This began with a three-days' 

 meeting of the committee on extension organization and policy, held 

 prior to the opening of the convention, which was most helpful in 

 enabling thorough consideration and conference on many funda- 

 mental questions arising from the new enterprise. This conference 

 was attended by the chairman of the executive committee and the 

 president of the association, and as the deliberations necessarily con- 

 cerned the Department of Agriculture, which is cooperating so 

 intimately in the enterprise, several of its officers connected with the 

 work were brought into the meetings. The whole effort was to 

 arrive at a proper point of view with respect to certain principles 

 of general application, realizing that adaptations would need to be 

 made to local conditions and requirements. 



The desirability of thorough study at the outset arises from the 

 novelty of the undertaking in its present scope, the limited experience 

 had in such effort, and the fact that great confusion has arisen as to 

 the aims and purposes of the movement. No such undertaking of a 

 national scope and such ultimate dimensions has ever been sanc- 

 tioned by a people ; and with little time for preparation it has been 

 assigned to the colleges to give it form and effect. The lines are 

 being laid for a permanent enterprise, which is to constitute a great 

 national system. The true significance of the movement is not yet 

 grasped by the great body of the people, and probably not fully by 

 some of those entering into it. As Dr. True stated, " the agi'icul- 

 tural college is to be changed from an institution having a strictly 

 local habitat, with comparatively limited powers for the diffusion of 

 knowledge, to a widely diffused institution dealing educationally 

 with multitudes of people at their own homes. And it is to carry 

 with it wherever it goes the Xational Department of Agriculture, not 

 only as a provider of funds, but as an active coadjutor in its educa- 

 tional operations." This involves more than the appointment of 

 additional officers and specialists, and machinery to secure the eco- 

 nomical expenditure of the new public funds. It requires that the 

 extension work be made a vital part of the organism of the college 

 and the Department, if the ends reasonably expected are attained; 

 and it calls for a sympathetic and helpfid spirit between the various 

 classes of workers, with due appreciation of the work of each and 

 loyalty to the enterprise as a whole. 



A visible product of the conference was a report of the committee 

 on extension organization and policy, consisting largely of descrip- 

 tions and definitions of terms applying to extension work; but in 

 fact it went far deeper than this in the crystallizing of ideas as to 



