Agricultural Education g 



The Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture tried, as 

 early as 1796 and 1800, to act as a medium for the exchange 

 of ideas and discoveries in agriculture and for their spread 

 throughout the state. Stock exhibits in the state gave rise to 

 various societies in the first decade of the nineteenth century. 

 These societies were responsible for the efforts to introduce 

 agriculture into the Massachusetts schools already mentioned. 

 In New York almost from the beginning of the century to the 

 establishment of the College of Agriculture at Cornell in 1868, 

 speakers were furnished to local clubs by the State Agricultural 

 Society. The first agricultural society in New Hampshire, so 

 far as known, worked under a charter granted in 1814. The 

 county societies received state aid from 1817 to 1820. The Maine 

 legislature in 1832 voted premiums to the various agricultural 

 societies ; and the required reports of the exhibitors were printed 

 in the Maine Farmer, and were discussed by the farmers' clubs 

 throughout the state. 



State boards of agriculture, organized under one name or 

 another toward the middle of the century and after, have served 

 as central bodies to direct farmers' institutes, manage state fairs, 

 carry on investigations and tests, and protect farm interests from 

 various forms of pests and injury. The 44 states and terri- 

 tories reporting for the year ending June 30, 1909, show an 

 aggregate of 15,535 half-day sessions in 5,014 institutes, ad- 

 dressed by 1,130 state speakers and possibly three times as many 

 more local speakers. The cost of these institutes amounted to 

 $328,660.86.^^ Almost 40 per cent of the state lecturers hold 

 college degrees, and another 16 per cent have taken partial col- 

 lege courses.^® 



Since 1903, federal aid, other than financial, has been ex- 

 tended to the state institutes through a " farmers' institute 

 specialist," attached to the Office of Experiment Stations. 



Akin to these are the various activities of the agricultural 



"Yearbook, Department of Agriculture, 1909, p. 137. 

 '* Based on data in History of Farmers' Institutes in the United States, 

 by John Hamilton, Bull. 174, Ofifice of Experiment Stations, p. 7. 



