60 THE COUNTY AGENT'S SERVICES 



own purpose to inform, the local public of what he is doing. 

 If this phase of county agent work is to function fully 

 and it is important that it should the county agent must 

 give it the time necessary to prepare and send out regu- 

 larly in time to reach the editor before each issue of his 

 paper, the right kind of news in brief and readable form. 

 This should include not only notices and plans for com- 

 munity and county meetings and other events to come, but 

 summaries of what happened at the meetings, interesting re- 

 sults arising from changes in practices recommended by 

 the agent in the community, local farm experiences gath- 

 ered here and there, etc. This will be facilitated and the 

 agent assisted in doing it, by the designation of some local 

 committeemen or other farmers to report items of local 

 interest to the editor. The city daily papers which circu- 

 late among farmers usually have their local community rep- 

 resentatives, who, with a little coaching, can be depended 

 upon to secure the necessary information for their own 

 papers, especially if they are kept advised of meetings and 

 notified of events of special interest to their readers. They 

 and the local weekly editor should be invited to call at the 

 office regularly for news, and there should always be some- 

 thing there for them. 



CORRESPONDENCE 



Little need be said about this method of giving informa- 

 tion. It is one of the most useful of all the methods avail- 

 able with the written word because it may be made very 

 personal. Inquiries by letter should always be encouraged 

 by the county agent, and answered fully and promptly. No 

 good points can make up for delay in answering letters. 

 Many county agents will have to plead guilty to the charge 

 of being slow to reply to letters and in too many cases of 



