THE EXTENSION SERVICE 173 



as determined by thousands of field trials in several corn-belt states, 

 is not only ready to go home and select his own seed accordingly but 

 he is also ready to accept other recommendations from recognized 

 specialists regarding seed selection and along other lines. The farmer 

 or his wife who, after attending a poultry culling demonstration put 

 on by the farmers' institute or the Farm Bureau, selects his own flock 

 of hens carefully and arranges his poultry house and provides the 

 feed and care as suggested by the poultry specialist, to find later that 

 his net income has been doubled and trebled, is ready to read with a 

 responsive mind the statements of other specialists regarding other 

 lines of work. 



Looking back over fifteen years of service in state and county 

 extension work, I have a very definite feeling that there is now a 

 rapidly developing belief in, and "a growing demand for, the advice 

 of specialists along all lines which have to do with the science and the 

 economics of both farming and home making. 



A GROWING APPRECIATION OF THE PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE GAINED 

 BY FARM EXPERIENCE 



During the recent rapid development of the Extension Service, 

 extension workers have brought to the attention of the public so 

 many instances of valuable practises that have been developed gradu- 

 ally, through the years, on individual farms and in communities, that 

 there is now a rapidly growing realization that some of the best 

 lessons regarding the art of agriculture are to be learned out on the 

 farms of the country. 



The announcement made this past year by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture of the method of sanitary production of 

 pork, known as the "McLean county system of swine sanitation," was 

 preceded five years by the publication of the results of studies made 

 by the Department of Farm Organization and Management of the 

 University of Illinois, on the farms of pork producers in central 

 Illinois. In these studies it was shown that the men who raised and 

 fed their pigs on fresh legume pastures were able to produce pork for 

 forty to sixty per cent less cost per pound than were those who kept 

 their pigs in old dry-lots and small, long-used, blue-grass pastures. 

 The difference was then attributed largely to the superior value of 

 the green legume forage as a feed, but recent developments would 

 indicate that much of the difference was doubtless due to the better 

 sanitary conditions. But regardless of why those men were getting 

 more economic returns for their capital and labor, the fact remains 



