CHAPTER XIV 



OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 

 EDUCATION THROUGH FARM DEMONSTRATION l 



BRADFORD KNAPP 



IN 1903-04 Congress made an appropriation authorizing work 

 to counteract the ravages of the Mexican cotton boll weevil in 

 Texas and other cotton states. This insect pest was laying waste 

 the cotton fields of the Southwest, leaving abandoned farms and 

 business failures in its wake. A small portion of the funds so 

 appropriated was devoted to a work conducted by the late Dr. 

 Seaman A. Knapp to enable him to try out his method of teach- 

 ing by conducting a large number of demonstrations on farms 

 as described above. Dr. Knapp was then seventy years of age. 

 He had been a stock farmer in Iowa in the '70 's, and afterwards 

 Professor of Agriculture and President of the Iowa Agricultural 

 College. lie had come to the South in 1885 and had devoted 

 a great deal of his time to the development of the rice industry 

 in Louisiana. In that work and in some of his work in Iowa he 

 had used simple, direct methods of reaching farmers through 

 practical field examples and, out of that experience, had sug- 

 gested that he be permitted to try his plan of teaching farmers 

 through demonstrations conducted on their own farms. 



The work was actually begun in January, 1904. The main 

 features consisted of personal visits of the department's repre- 

 sentatives to a large number of farms scattered over the coun- 

 try then seriously affected. Demonstrations were carried on by 

 these farmers under the careful instruction of these representa- 

 tives. At first the work was devoted mainly to improving the 

 cultural methods of raising cotton in order to minimize the 

 damage from the weevil. However, it was soon seen that the 



i Adapted from Annals of tUe American Academy of Political and Social 

 Science, Vol. 07: 224-240, 191(5. 



377 



