482 AGRICULTURE 



agement of soils and crops when the seasons are too 

 dry or too wet; in the best organization of farm enter- 

 prises ; and in the management of all of the efficiency fac- 

 tors important to the success of American agriculture. 



2. Financial Support 



The county agent work was first supported by the 

 United States Department of Agriculture by the use of 

 funds directly appropriated by Congress to the Depart- 

 ment. This was liberally supplemented by a fund from the 

 General Education Board, having in trust a large fund 

 donated by John D. Rockefeller. The work under Doctor 

 Knapp's direction made definite progress toward the ex- 

 termination of the boll weevil and the development of re- 

 sistant types of cotton. The best part of his work was the 

 fact that through the county agent movement he succeeded 

 in getting the southern farmers to appreciate that they 

 needed to grow their own pork, beef, poultry and dairy 

 products and that crop rotation was quite as possible in the 

 South as in the central and northern states. He also dem- 

 onstrated through these men that growing cotton as a single 

 crop enterprise from year to year meant certain destruction 

 agriculturally to the South. 



This work called for a more liberal appropriation of 

 funds from year to year from four different sources : ( 1 ) 

 The United States Department of Agriculture; (2) the 

 state legislatures; (3) the General Education Board; (4) 

 the local or county government. 



The United States Congress in the year 1912 appro- 

 priated an additional amount of money to be expended for 

 the development of farm demonstration and county agent 

 work in the northern, central and western states for the 

 first time. This fund was supplemented by one hundred 

 thousand dollars donated by a Chicago business man. In 



