EDUCATION OF RURAL .PEOPLE 115 



Bureau of Education. We need a certain measure of 

 federal support for the local rural school. To deprive 

 this school of its initiative, its local management, of 

 the necessity of local support, would of course be fatal 

 to its best efficiency. The great gain through federal 

 direction and support of the development of a national 

 policy lies in the opportunity to aid and stimulate the 

 small farming community to give its boys and its girls as 

 good an education as can be obtained in the largest city 

 of the union. 



A FEW SUGGESTIONS ABOUT AGRICULTURAL 

 EDUCATION 



During the past fifty years, America has organized 

 a comprehensive system of agricultural education, per- 

 haps in its extent and scope the greatest of any country 

 in the world. There exists an agricultural college in 

 each state, giving both college grade work and short 

 courses for those not desiring to graduate; schools of 

 agriculture designed for boys and girls under 18 years 

 of age; a rapidly increasing number of agricultural de- 

 partments of public high schools; the teaching of agri- 

 culture as a subject in the high schools alongside of 

 algebra and language, and hundreds of thousands of 

 boys and girls working in the agricultural clubs of the 

 various states. A great army is training for agricul- 

 ture. But that is only part of the story. Under the 

 Smith-Lever Act of 1912, there was established a na- 

 tional system of extension service which endeavors to 

 reach practically every farmer in the land with the best 

 the agricultural colleges can give. As a result of the 

 act, the farm bureau system is emerging and will soon 

 be found in nearly every agricultural county in the 

 United States. The United States Department of 



