66 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 7 



minded farmers especially. As outgrowths of the Demonstration work 

 we have the Boys' Corn Clubs and Pig Clubs and the Girls' Tomato 

 and Canning Clubs. All of these organizations have as yet, however, 

 been unable to reach the average cotton farmer of the South. The 

 work must be multiplied and greatly extended before we can consider 

 the cami^aign successful. It must not only reach the question of 

 increased yields and greater profits from the sum total of farming opera- 

 tions, which is indeed the cornerstone upon which other phases of 

 farming improvement must be based, but there must be provided some 

 means for securing to the rural population a leadership and an initiative 

 that they are in most cases incapable of supplying for themselves. We 

 also face the fact that more farmers have moved from their farms into 

 town, in order to give their children the benefit of better school facili- 

 ties, than have left the farms because of inability to make a satisfactory 

 profit from them. Others have tired of the isolation of their country life 

 through roads that may be impassable for several months of the year. 



For these and many other reasons we believe today that the pro- 

 gressive agricultural movement in the South involves not only the pro- 

 duction of crops, but also the improvement of rural school and church 

 facilities, of rural roads and other means of communication, and such 

 l^rovision for community life and cooperative action as shall make ru- 

 ral life fully satisfactory financially, intellectually and morally. 



It is to help in securing the accomplishment of such objects that we 

 have inaugurated in Alabama a plan for County Agricultural Advisory 

 Committees composed of a few leading spirits, in order to initiate new 

 lines of effort and to coordinate all forces now at work in the field. 



Briefly stated; the plan is to form a county advisory agricultural com- 

 mittee to consist of from six to ten men, representing particularly the 

 banking, mercantile, farming and educational interests, through the 

 appointment on the committee of at least one representative from each 

 class; that is, a banker, a merchant doing a large advancing business, 

 a large and successful planter or landowner — someone who is thor- 

 oughly familiar wdth the best agricultural practices for fighting the 

 weevil — in most cases the county demonstration agent — and the 

 county superintendent of education. This committee may be selected 

 through a mass meetmg, or organized under the initiative of a board of 

 trade, or in almost any other way. The general purpose of the com- 

 mittee is to consider and recommend and foster all general movements 

 looking for agricultural or rural betterment. Naturally, those things 

 which are of immediate importance in the campaign against the boil 

 weevil will receive first attention. The committee considers all local 

 conditions and recommends a general plan of action and certain defi- 

 nite purposes for business men to keep working toward, while safe- 



