FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II 163 



tutes and assisted in the organization of another short course in the 

 county. We organized the first Holstein breeders' association that was 

 organized in the state of Iowa. The next spring we started out and 

 organized two institutes and laeld a one day's session at one place and 

 at the other a three days' session, an institute that had previous to that 

 time been started in Black Hawk county. The first year after that we 

 started out to put in some experimental tests with these with corn, alfalfa 

 and lime. We shipped in something like three car loads of lime, making 

 some twenty-five or thirty experiments. Since that time we have shipped 

 in twenty-five or thirty car loads of lime. We have continued the lime, 

 the alfalfa and the corn experiments. I am unable to say how many 

 experiments we had in the line of corn, and I don't know how many 

 corn experiments were distributed to other lines. We conducted in the 

 first year, in conjunction with the agricultural association and each of 

 the experiment associations, something like seventy-five to one hundred 

 tests with lime, alfalfa and corn. The second year we started out on two 

 principal lines, one of alfalfa and the other of corn. We started out in 

 cooperation with the Agricultural College. We arranged night meetings 

 in the county. It cost the extension department something like $1,000 

 to put that campaign on; it cost the association something like $150. The 

 meetings were arranged so that no farmer was more than three miles 

 from any meeting place. Earlier in the spring, Leavitt & Johnson, of the 

 National Bank of Waterloo, in cooperation with the Crop Improvement 

 Association, put on the corn contest. They offered $1,300 in cash premiums 

 in that contest and paid other premiums that amounted to more than 

 the cash premiums. We started in the spring sending out notices. Later 

 on we held a meeting, invited in two or three prominent farmers from 

 each township, and we held meetings. We arranged meetings in each of 

 the townships and as there are sixteen or eighteen townships in Black 

 Hawk county there were quite a number of these meetings. The result 

 was that on the 15th of May, when these entries were closed, we had 572 

 contestants, out of about one-fourth of the farmers of Black Hawk county. 

 Later on we organized seven boys and girls corn clubs and we worked 

 these corn clubs throughout the district. Starting in the spring, they 

 made germination tests of all the corn grown on their father's farm. 

 Later on they got out in the field and studied the cultivation of corn. 

 Still later on they made a study of the pests affecting corn. Many of 

 the boys and girls made collections of the common injurious insects, such 

 as the corn worm, and other pests, in the schools where these clubs were 

 held. Later, in the fall, they studied methods of selecting their seed 

 corn and caring for the same. When the contest was completed each one 

 of these boys and girls was required to submit two essays, and that, to- 

 gether with their work in the field and in the club, was the basis for 

 writing of their work through the entire year. 



I forgot to say a moment ago that $1,000 of the $1,300 was given for each 

 of the grade tests, and we allowed men and women and boys and girls, 

 without restrictions as to expense, to enter into that test. In the other 

 test, for $300, the boys and girls only were allowed to compete. The 



