ORGANIZATION AND STATUS OF WORK 197 



to their resident teaching, these men began to give lectures 

 about the state, in order to establish contact with farmers, 

 to learn their problems, as well as to give information. The 

 demand for this pioneer service grew rapidly as the peo- 

 ple became acquainted with it. Out of this work grew most 

 of our modern forms of extension. Personal visits and ac- 

 quaintanceships led to series of lectures in various com- 

 munities and then to local extension schools or short courses, 

 farm trains, local surveys, tests and demonstrations on 

 farms, winter short courses at the colleges, and finally to 

 local demonstration agents. Out of correspondence devel- 

 oped bulletins, reading courses, and a regular system of ex- 

 tension publications. And from a limited cooperation with 

 granges, farmers' clubs, churches, fairs and schools, came 

 an organized relationship with farmers through their public 

 county associations or farm bureaus. 



A national extension system employing thousands of 

 agents and specialists, and reaching yearly hundreds of 

 thousands of farmers, has now been evolved. This was 

 made possible by the Smith-Lever Extension Act, which 

 was itself the culmination of a quarter century or more of 

 the slowly developing extension movement. 



THE SMITH-LEVER EXTENSION ACT 



By July 1, 1914, farm demonstration work in the South 

 had been carried on for nearly ten years and farm manage- 

 ment field studies had been under way in the North and 

 West for almost as long. Together, they had resulted in 

 the appointment of six hundred and seventy-six agents in 

 the South and two hundred and fifty-two in the North and 

 West. There was a widespread sentiment that these two 

 lines of work should be put upon a permanent basis and 



