162 IoWA department OF AGRICULTURE 



President: Gentlemen — This will complete our program lor 

 this morning and we will stand adjourned at this time until 1 :30 

 o'clock this afternoon. 



AFTERNOON SESSION. 



Chairman: We will now complete our morning work by 

 listening to an address by Mr. A. A. Burger, County Agent, Black 

 Hawk county, Cedar Falls. 



ADDRESS. 



BY A. A. EERGER, COUNTY AGENT, CEDAK FALLS. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: I don't know what excuse shall be 

 offered for my being on the program this afternoon. I was glad to be 

 here and listen to the speeches this forenoon and the quite excellent re- 

 port of our county, district and state fairs. One thing that impressed me 

 in the talks this morning was the educational trend of the agricultural 

 movement of the state of Iowa. 



There was a time ten or fifteen years ago when it was a difficult propo- 

 sition to get an audience in the state of Iowa at a farmers' institute, but 

 that sentiment has been changed. You can notice it in the institute, the 

 short courses, in the fairs being held in the state of Iowa, and I have 

 found out in talking to members of the Dairy Commission, to the members 

 of the Extension Department, and you can see it all through the state 

 that there is a greater interest being taken along agricultural lines. 



Now, I am here to talk to you people a little while about the live stock 

 movement. I will first talk to you briefly about what we are trying to do 

 in Black Hawk county, and in that way you will get an idea of what 

 we are trying to do in various counties in the state of Iowa; and you 

 will pardon me if I refer to what we have done, or attempted to do, in 

 Black Hawk county. Some may imagine that it is our province to tell 

 people how they should manage their farms, etc. It is not that at all. 

 That is the least part of the county agricultural agent's duties. He is not 

 there to tell the people any more than our college, any more than the 

 extension department, any more than the experiment station are to tell 

 people how absolutely to do things on the farm. The question is simply 

 as to the extension of the extension department into the various counties. 

 Now, you know, yourselves — you are all thinking men — it is a pretty hard 

 proposition to get hold of some people in the county, and the only way 

 you have of getting hold of them is by going to see those people privately. 

 Now, our people in Black Hawk county raised $1,500 to do that work. 

 It was part of my work to raise that subscription list of some 300 or 400 

 farmers of Iowa, so I went out on the farms of Black Hawk county, for 

 I was to work for it in Black Hawk as well as in many of the other 

 counties in the northern part of the state of Iowa. That same winter we 

 organized one short course. We organized and held two farmers' insti- 



