lo Agricultural Instruction in the Public High Schools 



colleges. They conduct '' short courses " of from one week to 

 several months, during the winter, which are open to all, offer 

 correspondence courses, and run traveling schools, such as the 

 so-called " corn specials," " alfalfa trains," etc. This unique 

 form of school is a train of several cars fitted up as small 

 museums, lecture rooms, and quarters for the instructors. Stops 

 are made at small stations and cross-roads on the railroad accord- 

 ing to an advertised schedule for a short time varying from 

 several minutes to a few hours. Another form of college exten- 

 sion work is the boys' club contests for the exhibition of corn, 

 cotton, or other produce of local importance, held in the various 

 counties of the state, while the corresponding girls' home 

 economics clubs make appropriate displays. The University of 

 Illinois inaugurated the plan of having the prizes take the form 

 of trips to the university during the winter short course. 



While the government funds are distributed to the agricultural 

 colleges by the Department of the Interior, the Department of 

 Agriculture acts as the great clearing house for the activities 

 of the colleges and experiment stations, prosecutes extensive 

 scientific investigations at home and abroad, and seeks to control 

 or lessen disasters of interstate importance to agricultural inter- 

 ests, such as the cotton-boll weevil and the foot-and-mouth dis- 

 ease. These various reports and findings are issued as regular 

 or special publications of the department. 



No less wonderful than the development of the agricultural 

 college has been the rapid growth within the present decade 

 of the agricultural movement in the elementary and secondary 

 schools of our public school system. Instruction in the rudiments 

 of agriculture is required in the elementary schools of Alabama, 

 Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Mis- 

 souri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, 

 Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, fifteen in all.^^ 



" From reports of state superintendents to the author and the United 

 States Department of Agriculture. See Annual Report Office of Ex- 



E^riment Stations, 1906, !>. 271 and Report of the Commissioner of 

 ducation, 1919, vol. i, pj). 276-277. 



