THE DEMONSTRATION WORK 



Demonstration Work and most largely influential in establish- 

 ing a policy of co-operative extension work by an enactment 

 of Congress should have also been prominent and influential 

 in the passage of the Hatch Act, providing for experiment 

 stations. No man realized more fully than he did that the re- 

 search and experiment station work by the Department and 

 colleges were inadequate and incomplete until a proper form 

 of extension activity could be worked out. 



Hundreds of Corn Club Boys have graduated from the 

 agricultural colleges and thousands of them are now active 

 and successful farmers. In the communities where they live 

 it is far easier to promote organization of farmers, and the 

 co-operation of the people along marketing lines than was true 

 at the time the first Corn Clubs were organized. 



W. W. Finley, former President of the Southern Railroad, 

 paid the following tribute to Dr. Knapp's participation in 

 the Corn Club Work, in an address to the State Teachers* 

 Association of South Carolina, in June, 1912 : 



"Splendid as have been the results of Dr. Knapp's cooperative 

 farm demonstration work, I beHeve that by far the most important 

 thing he ever undertook was the inauguration of the Boys' Corn 

 Club Work. The immediate and primary effect of this work is 

 seen not only in the records of the large yields made by individual 

 members of the Boys' Com Clubs throughout the South, but in 

 the increasing average yield per acre in all of the states resulting 

 from the stimulation of interest in the best cultural methods and in 

 seed selection. If the Boys' Corn Clubs had done nothing more, 

 their records would stand as an imperishable monument to the 

 memory of Dr. Knapp. But in my opinion the most important 

 results are not in the raising of corn, but in the raising of farmers. 

 They are essentially agricultural schools. The boy who hopes to 

 make a creditable showing or a record-breaking crop and to do so by 

 methods that will yield a profitable margin over the cost of pro- 

 duction must be a student. The members of the Boys' Com Club 

 not only acquire theoretical and practical knowledge as to the best 



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