Conservation Movement 265 



With the hoped-for expansion of game research, many additional new facts 

 will become known each year, but each one will be known and understood by only 

 a few persons. 



To bring about the widespread practice of effective game management, it is 

 essential that the available stock of facts be kept in circulation, and particularly 

 that they be circulated to the man who can apply them to the land, namely, the 

 farmer. It is almost equally important that the landowner's actual experiences be 

 circulated to other landowners, and to sportsmen and research workers who lack 

 direct contact with the land. 



In agriculture and forestry this job of keeping facts in circulation is known 

 as extension work. A great organization, far larger and more skillful than the 

 average citizen appreciates, spreads its network of skilled workers over the entire 

 country. It undertakes not merely the circulation of the facts on farming dis- 

 covered by the agricultural colleges and the U. S. Department of Agriculture, but 

 also the vocational education of rural inhabitants of all ages. It relies in part on 

 printed matter and classroom work as the vehicles for conveying thought, but to 

 an even greater extent it relies on actual physical demonstrations to describe new 

 discoveries and approved techniques. It is no mere "uplift" machine. It is a 

 nation-wide "rural exchange," covering all aspects of rural life, in which any 

 rural citizen may, if he wishes, be both pupil and instructor. 



Its subject matter includes all manner of farm by-products, except game, and 

 all manner of incidental farm activities, except game management. 



The physical magnitude of the farm extension organization in this region 

 may be judged from this table: 



TABLE 58. Agricultural extension organization 



Number of Number of 



Smith-Hughes Number of Smith-Hughes Number of 



State Agricultural couny agricul- State Agricultural couny agricul- 



high schools tural agents high schools rural agents 



Minnesota 62 65 Indiana 139 



Wisconsin 94 56 Ohio 197 



Michigan 144 62 Missouri 137 



Iowa 112 82 Total __1,073 616 



Illinois 188 



An agricultural high school is a rural high school of any sort where one or 

 more of the faculty teach vocational agriculture, half their salaries being contrib- 

 uted by the Federal Government under the authority of the Smith-Hughes Act, 

 and the rest by the county or State. 



A county agent is a trained agriculturist maintained jointly by the county and 

 the Federal Government for teaching and demonstrating improved agricultural 

 methods. He acts as liason between the farmer and the agricultural college. 



The table shows that, broadly speaking, there is an agricultural high school 

 and also a county agent in each county of the north central region. Taken col- 

 lectively, these extension officers are three times as numerous as game officers, and 



