FUTURE OF THE FARM BUREAU MOVEMENT 259 



rights and privileges is closely adhered to, as it should be, 

 both policies and program will be jointly arrived at and 

 agreed to on a fifty-fifty basis. To assure this, both parties 

 must provide funds and together administer them, since 

 administration follows funds. The same principle will 

 require the joint employment of the county agent, the 

 sharing of his salary, and the joint supervision of his work. 

 Having met these standards, the public institutions 

 should then deal with the county organizations in all mat- 

 ters of program, finances, and contracts. The county 

 agent is the joint representative of the public and of the 

 farmer partner, and the relationship which he bears to the 

 farm bureau the local association of people should be 

 that of a skilled employee to his employer as the hired 

 manager of an enterprise in which the local people are co- 

 operating with the public agricultural institutions for the 

 improvement of agriculture. Only by such means can the 

 best local initiative be secured while at the same time the 

 advantages of the public relationship are retained. In 

 some quarters there is a tendency to break up this partner- 

 ship. Officers of the Department of Agriculture are re- 

 sponsible for some of the tendency toward separation of 

 the county agent and the farm bureau. Jealous of their 

 own share of control of the agents and fearful of the effect 

 of interested or inspired criticism in Congress on appro- 

 priations, the Department has sought by agreements and 

 fine distinctions to differentiate the functions of the county 

 agent and the farm bureau and to separate their activities. 

 In this many of the states have acquiesced. The county 

 agent has been restrained, some of the local interest dissi- 

 pated and separation emphasized. Thus has the farm 

 bureau been pushed into independent and often unwise 

 action by the attitude of Department representatives. 



