166 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III. 



President Cameron : The next subject on the program is some- 

 thing in which we are interested : Boys and Girls Club Work. 

 We have with us the State Leader, Professor P. C. Taff of Ames, 

 who is very much interested in Boys and Girls club work, and who 

 has had a great deal to do in making it a success in the state of 

 Iowa. I take pleasure ,in introducing Professor Taff at this time. 



Prof. P. C. Taff: Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the convention: I 

 am especially glad to have the opportunity to talk with you a few 

 minutes this morning about this important question. I don't know where 

 we could get a group of men together who would be more interested 

 and more influential in developing this type of work than the people 

 we have here this morning, so I am especially glad to meet you on that 

 account. 



I believe this is the most important work we have to do in order to 

 meet our agricultural problems of the future. I believe we have the 

 greatest opportunity to really develop agriculture by working with the 

 boys and girls. You people know this to be a fact and you are trying, 

 through your fair work and other institute work, to introduce the best 

 known agricultural practice. You know if you take an agricultural prac- 

 tice and place it in the hands of a person forty or fifty years old that that 

 practice is not going to be used by that person very long, probably ten or 

 not to exceed fifteen years in the ordinary expectancy of life. But you 

 can take that same practice and you can put it in the hands of a young 

 person, a boy or girl fifteen to twenty years of age, just coming into the 

 use of that information and that information will be used by that per- 

 son anywhere from forty to fifty years. And so I say from the stand- 

 point of economy, the expenditure of funds, you are going to do more 

 with your money and with your efforts in working with the boys and the 

 girls than you are with the older people. That is to say nothing of the 

 well-known fact among educators that a boy or girl can be taught more 

 than an older person. "We have our habits established. We think we 

 know certain things from experience, and men who are on the farms do 

 know a lot of things from experience, and they don't take so readily to 

 new ideas as do the boys and the girls. And so I say from that stand- 

 point, too, it is well worthwhile to expend your efforts as much as you can 

 upon the boys and the girls. 



This boys' and girls' club work that you all assist in considerably, it 

 seems to me, fits especially well into the plan of your fair work. In the 

 first place, one of the principal things that we try to hold up to these 

 boys and girls is that they ought to learn from it some better methods than 

 anyone used before. That is the educational side of the work and one 

 of the most important. I believe that is one thing that fairs are trying 

 to do. They are trying to push along, in other words, to give the individ- 

 ual something a little better than he had before. We try to do that in 

 boys' and girls' club work. And we believe we accomplish a great deal 

 along that line, because when a boy or girl goes into the work he or she 

 receives some information and begins to use it in the home or on the 

 farm. 



