BOYS' AND GIRLS' CORN AND TOMATOES CLUBS. 



By O. H. Benson, 



Specialist in Charge of Club Work, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Office of 



Farm Management. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have baen delegated by 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and invited by your Program Com- 

 mittee, to appear this evening in further support of the boys' and girls' 

 club work. My department at Washington will expect me to say and do 

 enough to warrant the expense of sending me here, and your committee 

 will expect me to say and do something. It is already late and time for 

 most of us to seek our ''trundle beds." 



If I presume to keep you a bit later tonight than it is your custom to 

 remain out, no doubt you will forgive me under the circumstances. 



During the past few years it has been my duty to travel much out into 

 the states in the interest of boys' and girls' club work. With the exception 

 of Ohio, all of the regular and national club work has been in co-operation 

 with and through the extension departments of the colleges of agriculture. 

 We recognize that the state colleges are the legitimate institutions 

 through which the regular state extension work in agriculture should be 

 performed. In the support of this position the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture has been paying one-half the expense of one or more state 

 leaders in each of the twenty states in club work. This leader is selected 

 by the college authorities and is directly supervised by the head of the 

 Extension Department; such arrangements have been perfected in twenty 

 states in the Union; all the Southern and the following in the North: 

 Massachusetts, Michigan^ Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah and Oregon. 

 In addition, we have tentative arrangements through the appointment of 

 club collaborators in the following states, who are all ready for the Federal 

 half-and-half plan, as soon as additional funds are available: Connecticut, 

 Rhode Island, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Wash- 

 ington, Kansas and California. 



We appreciate the fact today as never before, that if we are to have a 

 constructive agriculture, a permanent and promising rural life, we will 

 not make much headway by devoting all of our time, energy and money 

 in talking to and in the instructing of the adult farmers. Unfortunately, 

 many of the adult farmers now on the firing line have too many years of 

 habit back of them. And second, they have too much of prejudice for a 

 free and efficient use of the newer ideas in agriculture and farm management 

 values. On the contrary, the average American boy is open minded, has 



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