172 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



Farmers' Institute has been a tremendous force which has inspired 

 thousands of farm people and helped to develop in them the qualities 

 of leadership. The president of the Illinois Agricultural Association 

 stated publicly a few days ago that he first became interested in organ- 

 ized agricultural work when he was asked to assist the corn judge at 

 a farmers' institute fifteen years ago. The Grange has helped in 

 many localities to develop some of the strongest leaders in the county 

 and the state, as well as in the home communities. Chautauqua speak- 

 ers have led many a farmer and his good wife, and many a boy and 

 girl, to take a new and greater interest in farm life. These, with 

 other forces, have developed leaders in nearly every community in 

 the state. 



The development of the Farm Bureau, which, as has been pointed 

 out, is primarily an extension organization, has been the means of 

 bringing into activity a great number of these potential leaders. It 

 has seemed to me during the past year that there is just now a rapid 

 increase in the number of men and women who are taking their places 

 as leaders in community, county, and state work. How this active 

 and potential leadership may be utilized in the Extension Service of 

 the near future will be considered later in connection with another 

 condition which has gradually been developing. 



THE GROWING APPRECIATION OF SPECIALISTS 



The same influences which have been at work developing the 

 active and potential leadership in every community in Illinois have 

 tended to create in the minds of the same people a respect for the 

 work and the opinions of specialists. The college student who has 

 come to realize, during a thoro course of study, the tremendous amount 

 of labor and the thousands of soil tests made by Dr. Hopkins and 

 his associates and successors, has a real regard for the statements of 

 fact and of opinion by the soil specialists of the University of Illinois. 

 The student of animal diseases who learns of the years of patient 

 study and the thoro tests made by those men who discovered and 

 developed the serum-virus preventive treatment for hog cholera will 

 listen to or read with respect statements made by the same and other 

 specialists regarding the control of other live-stock diseases, and he 

 will not hesitate to follow those suggestions in his own farming 

 operations. 



The short course student who learns that the score card for corn 

 by which he is taught to select his seed is the condensed conclusion 

 regarding the best size and shape and condition of kernels and ears 



