82 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



agement. This campaign has tended to Improve our live stock and to 

 cause men to demand that class of animals which will produce the 

 maximum of l:eef, pork cr butter fat from a bushel of corn and a ton of 

 hay. 



In view of the fact that information is so widely and cheaply dis- 

 seminated through the press and by the railroads with such good results, 

 the question naturally arises: What is the use of the State appropriating 

 over $12,000 annually to promote institute work? 



If I understand the purpose of the institute it is, briefly, this: To 

 make the principles established by the State and national experiment 

 stations and other agencies applicable to the conditions of the county in 

 which the institute is held. 



The principles established by the experiment station in Story county 

 will hold good in Lyon and Lee counties, but there is more than likely 

 to be need of some change in tlie application. Practices, the usefulness of 

 which are well established in Lincoln, Urbana or Madison, may be only 

 partially practical or absolutely worthless in central Iowa. 



So, I say, if I understand the place of the institute, it is primarily, to 

 bring to us in the counties the men familiar with the work of the ex- 

 periment stations and with the practices of the most successful farmers, 

 and familiar with the conditions on these farms, and to give us the 

 opportunity to discuss with them the application of their knowledge to 

 our own neighborhoods and counties. 



One of the strongest features of the institute is that it is, or should be, 

 an absolutely non-partisan organization for mutual self-help. In the in- 

 stitutes farmers come together each year for the consideration of matters 

 of general interest, free from the restraints of partisan prejudice. An 

 organization of this kind, acting within the field which it would naturally 

 cover, may forward many public movements or stop abuses, which if taken 

 up first by some party or faction would be ineffectual. I am told that the 

 rural delivery system was first agitated by the farmers' national congress. 

 It was put into operation quietly and without any fuss or feathers and 

 now reaches almost every community in the Nation. Had this matter 

 been first brought forth and pushed by some party or demagogue it is 

 scarcely possible that it could have been so quickly brought to its present 

 high state of efficiency. 



In many counties the success of local public enterprises is due primarily 

 to the institutes. They have an influence entirely out of proportion to the 

 numerical sti'ength of their members. Being non-partisan in their makeup, 

 comprised as they are of those men of the community who are abreast 

 of the times, those who are in the collar and not in the breeching, of the 

 men who do things, they are in a position to influence county legislation. 



In nothing is the influence of the institute felt more than in the good 

 roads movement. By general agitation among members, by employing 

 experts for instruction in the use of road tools, by offering liberal prizes 

 and obtaining help from boards of supervisors, the institute has given 

 improved roads to more than one community in Iowa. Not alone in the 

 use of the road drag have the institutes been effectual. Substantial im- 

 provements in the way of concrete and steel bridges and culverts and the 



