234 BACKGROUND AND MEANS OF SERVICE 



helpful at home. There was a natural curiosity to find 

 out what the other counties were doing and how they did 

 it. But more than this, there was undoubtedly in the 

 minds of many of the delegates a desire and a hope for a 

 larger organization that would come to mean to the state 

 what the county farm bureaus were coming to mean to the 

 counties. 



But there were not only common problems to discuss, 

 as finances, membership, results accomplished and methods 

 of securing them; there were mutual legislative, educa- 

 tional and other interests to protect and marketing prob- 

 lems demanding a policy and a solution. Here were 

 uniform county units being formed in most of the coun- 

 ties, cooperating in the employment of trained and ener- 

 getic young men, supported by the most progressive farmers 

 and with forward-looking programs. It was a very natural 

 American trait to want to apply this idea and to use this 

 machinery in a larger way. 



Underlying all these objects there was undoubtedly an 

 unformulated but none the less potent desire for a power 

 and influence in state and nation commensurate with the 

 importance of agriculture, and now being realized, as, for 

 example, in the formation of the "agricultural bloc" in 

 Congress. 



PRESENT EXTENT AND FINANCES 



It was not until after the organization of the national 

 federation in the fall of 1919, that the movement for state 

 federation became practically a national one. Up to this 

 time there were no state organizations relating especially 

 to farm bureau work in the South and less than twenty 

 in the entire United States. But with the organization of 

 the movement nationally and a glimpse of its possibilities, 

 with its eligibility to membership confined to "state farm 



