252 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



only a portion of the day. The plan also is proving to be wonderfully 

 effective. Co-operative work between the school and the farm home 

 is the most effective known means of trying out under the conditions 

 of individual farms, over widely scattered areas, methods which have 

 proved to be profitable elsewhere, as, for example, at the state agri- 

 cultural college or experiment station. Such co-operation furnishes 

 effective experimental means by which each boy can try out the 

 merits of the farm home as an agency for producing profits when 

 treated by the best known methods. The principles and methods 

 taught by the school can be positively adapted by each boy to the 

 economic conditions of the farm on which he may spend his working 

 days. 



An essential feature of the home-project or part-time plan of 

 training is the consideration of cost at all points. The boy by this 

 method learns first of all through his experience that there can be no 

 product without cost and no profit without excess of receipts over all 

 expenditures. After such an experience he will not be likely to under- 

 take a new enterprise without a serious attempt to estimate accurately 

 his probable profit. The boy is subjected to the prevailing economic 

 conditions under which the home farm must yield a profit or loss at 

 the end of each year of work. The methods by which the boy becomes 

 on a small scale a farmer or business man for himself gives the project 

 which he is carrying on and the school work in which he participates a 

 reality not otherwise attainable. 



72. FARMERS' CO-OPERATIVE DEMONSTRATION WORK 1 

 BY S. A. KNAPP 



The aim of the farmers' co-operative demonstration work is to 

 place a practical object-lesson before the farm masses, illustrating the 

 best and most profitable methods of producing the standard farm crops 

 and to secure such active participation in the demonstrations as to 

 prove that the average farmer can produce better results. The para- 

 mount issue is how most wisely and effectively to aid all the fural 

 people. If each farmer is shown how to produce twice as much to the 

 acre as he now produces and at less cost, it will be a profit in which 

 all rural classes will share and will be the basis of the greatest reform 

 ever known to rural life. 



1 Adapted from Circular No. 21, Bureau of Plant Industry, United States 

 Department of Agriculture, pp. 3-13. 



