farmers' institutes. 27 



among their less aggressive and more ignorant associates. But the 

 institutes should directly reach a far greater proportion of our farmers. 

 To do this various expedients will have to be adopted to adapt the 

 institutes to the needs of the different classes of our agricultural popu- 

 lation. For example, in communities where the farmers do not read 

 the agricultural papers or experiment station bulletins, or are remote 

 from the centers of advanced agricultural practice, demonstrations of 

 new methods, implements, and apparatus will often have to be made. 

 Thus in England great success has attended the traveling dairy schools, 

 and in New York the farmers' institutes have been supplanted with 

 demonstrations of improved culture and manuring of potatoes and 

 other crops through simple experiments in a large number of localities. 

 The Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama, is holding dairy institutes at the 

 country crossroads, where the operation of simple dairy apparatus is 

 shown to negro farmers, who come largely on muleback or on foot to 

 attend these meetings. 



RELATION TO THIS DEPARTMENT. 



These examples of institute problems have been given to illustrate 

 the fact that this movement has now reached such a stage of its devel- 

 opment that the comparatively simple methods hitherto followed in 

 the organization and maintenance of the institutes are not adequate for 

 an enterprise of such magnitude as this has become. The solution of 

 these problems will require much study, involving a comparison of 

 methods employed in the different States and countries. In its national 

 and international aspects there is room for much useful work by the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, which may well aid in this 

 as well as in other movements for the education of our farmers and 

 the improvement of our agriculture. 



Thus far the Department has done comparatively little toward help- 

 ing the institutes directly. The chief service which it has rendered 

 has been through the distribution of its publications to institute work- 

 ers, who have thus been enabled to keep in touch with the progress of 

 agriculture as reflected in these publications. Occasionally some officer 

 of the Department has spoken at the institutes, but there has been no 

 regular plan for the oral dissemination of the information gathered by 

 the Department. The Office of Experiment Stations has in recent 

 years issued a few publications giving accounts of the work of insti- 

 tutes in this country and similar work abroad. Following the natural 

 course of such movements in the United States, the farmers' institutes 

 have been developed, first through individuals and local organizations, 

 and secondly, through the aid of the States, but the time has now 

 come for the nation to do something to promote this great enterprise, 

 and the present Secretary of Agriculture is convinced that the national 



