212 BACKGROUND AND MEANS OF SERVICE 



sufficiently in the movement in the beginning to want to 

 father it. Even if they had, they could not and should not 

 have supplanted the objects for which such organization 

 was created with another and more or less foreign object, 

 such as the support of the county agent would be to them. 

 Such combination of the farm bureau movement with an- 

 other would, therefore, have weakened and caused it to fall 

 short of its full development. Lastly, nearly all present 

 farmers' organizations have limitations from which the 

 farm bureau movement must be kept free if it is to fulfil 

 its purpose. It must be non-secret, non-partisan, non-politi- 

 cal, and all inclusive, if it is to successfully carry out its 

 ideals. Other farmers' organizations are needed in their 

 own fields to do their own work. The informal structure of 

 the farm bureaus soon differentiated them from all other 

 organizations and largely avoided antagonisms and petty 

 jealousies. 



WHAT'S IN A NAME? 



The county farm bureau association idea, as we have 

 seen, did not grow up in a year. Chiefly educational in 

 character, its development has been neither spectacular nor 

 emotional. It was an evolution out of the experiences which 

 proved the need for it. The sponsors of the idea had to 

 demonstrate its greater effectiveness as an aid in carrying 

 on county agent work, and its indispensability in ' ' reaching 

 the last man." 



The movement was unfortunate in the name it acquired 

 as a department of a chamber of commerce, from which it 

 was apparently unable to free itself. " Bureau," as has 

 been said, sounds too much like a piece of furniture, or the 

 seat of a government bureaucrat. The name " County 

 Council of Agriculture," used in several of the Southern 



