58 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



suitable to our conditions, has been found very appropriate to 

 German, and is largely and willingly made use of ; that, moreover, 

 German agriculturists are distinctly " reading folk," and associating 

 and debating folk. " Associations " are their particular hobby. 

 Heine has declared that if two Germans, strangers to one another, 

 were to meet on the top of Mount Chimborazo, they would forth- 

 with form a " verein," that is, an " association," and start a dis- 

 cussion on some point or other. German farmers' discussions, 

 which are frequent and lively in their " vereine," turn, not on 

 tenants' grievances and a demand for a protective duty upon corn, 

 but upon points of agricultural practice. The intermixture of large, 

 and as a rule cultured, landowners and small also helps generally 

 forward towards the dissemination of information and the setting 

 of examples. 



France has had " Departmental Professors of Agriculture " in its 

 several departments (eighty-nine), to which now three more have 

 been added by the recovery of the territory lost in 1871, since 

 1879. The action of these professors was, however, limited, and 

 their influence accordingly remained restricted. They were rather 

 schoolmasters and conferenciers (lecturers) than " guides, philoso- 

 phers and friends." The services of these men were nevertheless 

 so highly appreciated that, as a parliamentary committee, presided 

 over by M. Meline, reported in 1905, " their activity was marked 

 by considerable development, such as the authors of the law of 1879 

 had scarcely foreseen." The teaching and advising apparatus was 

 therefore considerably enlarged, with new functions assigned to its 

 officers. The " decree " of 1905 has made real konsulenten of these 

 " professors." There is. as already observed, one to every depart- 

 ment, with, at present, 150 "special" professors added, to supple- 

 ment their services on special subjects. Under the new law the 

 " professors " of old have become " Directeurs des Services Agricoles" 

 and one of their functions — which makes their office anything but 

 a sinecure — is to superintend everything that is done within their 

 department in respect of agricultural education — above all things 

 to " vulgarise " — that is, to bring down to the understanding of 

 small cultivators — the meaning of the laws both of their craft and 

 of the country passed for the benefit of their craft ; moreover, 

 to organise demonstration stations, schools, experiments, co-opera- 

 tive societies, co-operative propaganda, insurance companies of all 

 sorts, courses of lectures, winter schools, and so on. They are also 

 expected to deliver a certain number of lectures on their own 

 account. But, in addition to all this, they have, like the agronomes 



