THE DEMONSTRATION WORK 



(10) Keep an account of each farm product, in order to know 

 from which the gain or loss arises." 



The spirit, the methods and the instructions of the 

 founder reveal the reasons why so many men of limited edu- 

 cation succeeded in establishing the Demonstration Work in 

 their counties. They caught the spirit, learned the methods 

 and followed the instructions. A magazine writer who under- 

 took to appraise the work being done by the Demonstration 

 Agents at that time after witnessing the zeal, enthusiasm and 

 devotion of the state, district and county agents, character- 

 ized their leader, the head of the work, as the ** Missionary 

 Bishop of American Agriculture." Doubtless he heard or 

 read Dr. Knapp 's instructions to the agents when he said ; 



"The power which transformed the humble fisherman of 

 Galilee into mighty apostles of truth is ever present and can be 

 used as effectively to-day in any good cause as when the Son of God 

 turned His footsteps from Judea's capital and spoke to the wayside 

 children of poverty." 



There was no abatement of this zeal in Dr. Knapp 's mind 

 when he held up before the agents the ideal country life in 

 these words : 



"Let it be the high privilege of this great and free people to 

 establish a republic where rural pride is equal to civic pride, where 

 men of the most refined taste and culture select the rural villa, and 

 where the wealth that comes from the soil finds its greatest return in 

 developing and perfecting that great domain of nature which God 

 has given to us as an everlasting estate. ' ' 



Throughout the years in which the Demonstration Work 

 was passing through its formative stages, the speeches, writ- 

 ings and conversations of its founder were full of the prin- 

 ciples and philosophy underlying it. Many agents, farmers, 

 business men, educators, congressmen and governors recall 

 his enthusiasm and his eloquence. Ofttimes he reasoned as 

 cogently and spoke as earnestly to one person as he did in 



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