24 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS OF STATION WORK. 



To disseminate the results of their work among our farmers the 

 stations are issuing a great variety of publications and distributing 

 them very widely. These publications not only include detailed 

 accounts of their investigations, but also short summaries of the 

 practical results and compilations of information on a great variety of 

 agricultural topics. They are also giving much attention to the 

 dissemination of information through the agricultural press by means 

 of press bulletins and special articles. The number of books prepared 

 by officers of the agricultural colleges and experiment stations is con- 

 stantly growing and these range all the way from elaborate scientific 

 treatises to very elementary and popular works. 



Undoubtedly much progress has been made in recent years in 

 acquainting our farmers with the results of experiment station work, 

 and it is obvious even to the superficial observer that results of the work 

 of the stations are being from } T ear to year more generally applied on 

 farms in different parts of the country. 



But while this is true, there is still a great amount of ignorance 

 regarding the work of the stations and especially regarding the ways 

 in which results obtained by the stations may be applied on the farm. 

 While the spread of education and the spirit of progress among our 

 farmers within the past few years has been very remarkable, there is 

 still a mass of ignorance and false conservatism which in the aggregate 

 constitutes a vast dead weight on our agriculture. As long as one 

 hundred out of every thousand men of voting age on our farms are 

 unable to either read or write (as is shown to be the case by the census 

 of 1900) it is not to be expected that the publication of the results 

 obtained at our experiment stations through printed documents will 

 suffice to meet the needs of our agricultural population regarding the 

 progress of the art. Even those farmers who are accustomed to read 

 ordinary books and newspapers are often not prepared to understand 

 and appreciate the station publications because of lack of the necessary 

 preliminary information. To supplement the station publications and 

 bring the results of their work more directly home to the farmer, the 

 stations have felt obliged to participate largely in the farmers' insti- 

 tutes now so generally held in many of our States. While this work 

 has, strictly speaking, been outside their province, at least as deter- 

 mined by the Federal law under which most of them are organized, it 

 has nevertheless been an efficient means of strengthening their position 

 and securing the confidence and support of their farmer constituencies. 

 The problem is, therefore, how to develop the farmers' institute 

 movement in its relation to the stations so as to make the institutes 

 more efficient and at the same time to prevent their interfering too 

 much with the duties of station officers as investigators and writers. 



