UNIVERSITY EXTENSION WORK IN FORESTRY 37 



meeting. Notable among these is the city of Mt. Vernon, where 

 the college gave valuble aid in the drafting of a shade tree com- 

 mission calling for the permanent services of a trained man. 



The question of financing the extension work in Forestry is 

 taken care of through a direct appropriation from the state for 

 this purpose. The college agrees to send its men into any given 

 neighborhood for a week of lectures (three communities or 

 more) without cost to the requesting agency, and requires only 

 that a crowd of more than 50 people be guaranteed and that 

 consistent local effort be put forth to advertise the meetings. 

 Where a forester goes out for only one lecture or demonstra- 

 tion, the requesting agency is required to pay his traveling and 

 subsistence expences. The appropriation also takes care of the 

 other activities except that libraries which borrow sets of books 

 are required to pay transportation charges each way and corre- 

 spondents registered for the course in "Lumber and Its Uses" 

 are charged a fee of $5.00 to cover books and material used. A 

 small wood collection is put into schools and other organizations 

 at actual cost, which is 50 cents. 



There are two big organization problems in extension along 

 forestry lines at present. The first one is the gathering and 

 distribution of the best and most usable information. That is, 

 the problem of keeping the workers properly "loaded" and at 

 the same time out of the rut where a proper "load" will tend 

 to keep them. To explain my rather clumsy figure further, I 

 may say that extension foresters must not generalize so much 

 that they merely entertain and they must not be so "technical" 

 that their talks go over the heads of their audiences. A peculiar 

 type of man must be developed for the ideal worker would com- 

 bine wide knowledge and experience with broad sympathies, 

 keen interests and ability to meet people in a friendly way. The 

 greatest lack at the present time among men available for this 

 work is actual knowledge and experience in forestry. 



The second problem is that of following up the work which 

 has been started by means of lectures, demonstrations and 

 study courses in various centers. If the eternal remark "For- 

 estry is a very important subject" is the only result of a visit 

 to a community further lecture and demonstration work is 

 necessary. On the other hand if some local man resolves to 



