PART VIIL 



PAPERS READ BEFORE FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



HOW TO IMPROVE THE INSTITUTES. 



E. J. McQuatters, before Worth County Farmers' Institute. 



As improvement seems to be the watchword of these times, in all 

 lines of education, it is not impossible for us to improve our institutes. 

 Let each succeeding one be better than the preceding one. So let us 

 endeavor to make this session the best session we have ever seen. We 

 must either improve or retrograde; there is no such thing as standing 

 still, on an exact balance, neither moving one way or the other. Ten 

 years ago last December the Farmers' Institute of Worth county was 

 organized. It has had a steady growth, never at any time receiving a 

 "boom"; after a "boom" there most invariably follows a depressed condi- 

 tion, if not a motality. 



The institute system in Iowa is recognized as good. It serves as an 

 educational factor. It is supplanting the old haphazard way of farming 

 with a systematic, scientific method that is proving of untold value to 

 the agricultural class of people. It was supposed at one time that the 

 great prairies of the west were inexhaustibly fertile. As the land became 

 old and worn it shows evidence of mistakes that the tillers have made. 

 The farmers, knowing this, began to look about for something that 

 would replace it. The rotation of crop has found to be of great advan- 

 tage. Then as the years passed there was a growing demand for farm 

 products, and to meet the demand the farmers' institute was introduced 

 as a ways and means committee to see if it could devise any way to 

 meet this increasing demand. T,he State of Illinois at first held con- 

 gressional farmers' institutes in each congressional district for a few 

 years. This gradually gave place to the ' county institute. At present 

 there are thirty-four State and Territorial farmers' institutes, holding 

 local county institutes. How these can be improved remains to be seen. 



The methods of conducting local institutes are not the same in all 

 -tates. An instructive farmers' institute should be a body of 



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