508 EXPEKIMENT STATION EECOED. 



Instead, this Act gives more definite purpose and force to their work, 

 and emphasizes its necessity in the development of agricultural prac- 

 tice. It is rooted in their activities and will be sustained by them. 

 Without them it would soon suffer the fate of the old-style farmers' 

 institutes. 



The new work will make enlarged demands upon the stations and 

 bring them closer to the people. While it may at times overshadow 

 them somewhat in the popular mind, it will add a vast army of 

 workers to their clientele, who will realize their ultimate dependence 

 on experimentation and research, and who will be in closer touch with 

 the people than any similar body of men and women yet organized. 

 They will therefore be in the best position to popularize and advocate 

 the work of the experiment stations. 



In thus seeking to promote the general welfare by a comprehensive 

 and permanent system of extension work on the farm and in the 

 home, the Federal Government becomes an active cooperator in the 

 campaign for rural development and progress which has made such 

 remarkable headway within recent years. For it is within a com- 

 paratively short period that the responsibilities of American civili- 

 zation as a whole to the open country have become fully appre- 

 ciated. 



Less than seven years ago, the holding of a conference by the 

 Massachusetts Agricultural College for the momentary bringing 

 together of the varied forces making for rural progress — educational, 

 social, religious, as well as distinctively agricultural — was regarded 

 as a novel and suggestive departure from the prevailing conception 

 of agriculture as an isolated industry and its welfare as a matter 

 of comparatively remote general significance. In 1909, after the 

 holding of similar sectional conferences in New England and else- 

 where, the appointment of the National Commission on Country 

 Life and similar related bodies, and the inauguration of some form 

 of extension work in nearly every State, we find the committee on 

 extension work of the Association of American Agricultural Col- 

 leges and Experiment Stations reporting that even " the various 

 institutions engaged in work in behalf of our agricultural industry 

 or rural people have labored very much by themselves. There has 

 been a very slight measure of coo^Deration between rural church, 

 country school, grange, club, agricultural college, and library." Still 

 less, of course, was this cooperation in evidence as between agricul- 

 tural and nonagricultural organizations. 



As an example of the changing point of view in this respect may 

 be cited the conferences on country life development held at Louis- 

 ville, Kentucky, April T-10, 1914. These conferences were sponsored 

 by purely educational agencies, constituting the seventeenth annual 



