112 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



FAKMEKS' INSTITUTES IN THE UNITED STATES. 



BY JOHN HAMILTON^ FARMERS^ INSTITUTE SPECIALIST^ U. S. DEPARTMENT OP 



AGRICULTURE, 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :— The farmers' institutes of the 

 United States have come into existence within twenty years, and in that 

 brief period have assumed proportions that entitle them to be classed 

 among the great educational movements of modern times. The reports 

 show that during the year, which closed on June 30, 1903, almost 1.000,- 

 000 of farming people have attended the institute meetings; that over 

 3,100 of these meetings were held during that year, composed of 0,570 

 sessions. Institutes were held in all of the states excepting three, and 

 in all of the territories excepting Alaska, Porto Rico, and Indian Ter- 

 ritory. The state directors, who have the management of institute 

 work in the several states, had in their employ 924 lecturers. In addi- 

 tion to this force of teachers, there w6re the local lecturers and essayists 

 engaged by the local managers of institutes in the several counties 

 numbering between 3,000 and 4,000 persons. 



A remarkable feature in this work is that while the several states 

 have acted independently of each other in organizing their institutes, 

 causing great diversity in practice in the details of the work, there is 

 nevertheless a general agreement in the essential features, which are 

 to carry agricultural instruction out to country people at their homes 

 and to do this by means of the living lecturer, who is usually a man 

 who ''.as worked out some problem in agricultural practice in his own 

 experience. The institute has no prescribed course of study to be pur- 

 sued ; it has no text-books to be consulted ; no examinations to be passed 

 for admittance or for graduation ; there are no matriculation charges 

 and no withdrawal from home to distant central school for a term of 

 years as is required by the other educational institutions of the coun- 

 try. The institute system is a branch of education by itself. Its method 

 of instruction is oral, accompanied by question and answer as the sub- 

 jects are presented. It illustrates and enforces its teaching by actual 

 demonstration, sometimes before the audience in the institute meeting, 

 often in the field, the stable, the orchard, the nursery, or the garden. It 

 has been organized to occupy a place and perform a service in aid of 

 agriculture that is not occupied or performed by any other educational 

 institution. It undertakes to educate men and women along the lines 

 of their several specialties by supplying them with the best scientific 

 and practical instruction along those lines, presented by the most com- 

 petent teachers that the country contains. It is not a system of mental 

 discipline organized for the development of the thinking powers, but 

 rather a school in which men of experience are assembled for the dis- 

 cussion of methods of practice and of economic problems connected with 

 the profession of agriculture. 



The teaching force in the employ of the state directors is made up 

 of men and women thoroughly equipped for the service that they have 

 to perform. An examination into the personal history of 623 of the lec- 

 turers in the employ of the state directors shows that 287 bear college 



