190 BACKGROUND AND MEANS OF SERVICE 



almost every successful enterprise. Good leadership in- 

 spires confidence, stimulates initiative, gets things done. 

 All this implies knowledge, training, personality and power. 

 No need among farmers was greater and no results of 

 county agent effort have been more worthwhile than the 

 exercise by the county agent of his own qualities of leader- 

 ship, and the searching out and arousing the abilities of 

 local farmers who have these leadership qualities. Little 

 considered as a reason for the county agent's existence in 

 the beginning, good leadership has come to be one of its 

 essential qualities. The agent who lacks it labors under a 

 handicap, however well trained and experienced in other 

 ways he may be. 



A HEADQUARTERS FOR AGRICULTURE 



Every community has its headquarters for religious af- 

 fairs in its churches, for its educational affairs in schools, 

 and for its political affairs in election districts, but few, 

 if any, of the more than twenty -five hundred agricultural 

 counties in the United States have, until the coming of the 

 county agent, had any headquarters for what is usually 

 their most important single business farming. 



Prior to the advent of the county agent and his local 

 office usually at the county seat, hardly a county could be 

 found where a stranger could go to find out the county's 

 farming and market resources if he thought of purchasing 

 a farm there, or who bred pure stock of a particular breed, 

 or who had pure seed to sell in case he wanted to buy. In- 

 deed, the local farmers themselves had no adequate means 

 of knowing these things. Nor did these same counties pro- 

 vide any rallying point for farmers or their organizations, 

 or facilities or other encouragement to advertise and to 

 develop its resources, There was no suitable place where 



