230 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The Reclamation Service is under- 

 New going another shake-up by Secre- 

 Shake-up of tary of the Interior Lane. 

 Reclamation Williams has been placed in charge 

 Service of the engineering and construction 

 work, and will have his offices in 

 Denver, Colo. This will be the central office of the 

 service. 



The Reclamation Commission is cut to three 

 members. I. D. O'Donnell will be retained as 

 Supervisor of Irrigation, but will not serve on the 

 Commission. Neither will Frederick H. Newell, 

 who was recently deposed as director but retained 

 as a consulting engineer. A. P. Davis is retained 

 as director, but is divested of the title and duties of 

 chief engineer. 



All supervising engineers and some other high- 

 priced help are to be dispensed with. The Recla- 

 mation Commission will continue to operate from 

 Washington, but much of the office force will be 

 sent to Denver. There will be other pruning and 

 consolidations to further cut down the overhead 

 charges. 



It looks as if Secretary Lane is really trying to 

 make a business organization out of the Reclama- 

 tion Service. 



Keep up the good work, Mr. Lane. 



Neighborhood patriotism is one of 

 the best elements that can be in- 

 Patriotism jected into any farming community. 

 Should Realizing this, the Department of 



Begin Agriculture has worked out a plan, 



At Home which it is prepared to supply to 



any farmer. 



The scheme calls for ten committees, five of 

 which are to deal with business needs, and five with 

 social needs. Every member of the organization 

 is to serve on some one of these committees. In ad- 

 dition, there is to be a central or executive com- 

 mittee composed of the President of the organiza- 

 tion, its Secretary, its Treasurer, and the Chairmen 

 of the ten other committees. This central body is 

 to direct the general policy of the organization, 

 raise all funds and control their expenditures. The 

 committees that are to deal with the business in- 

 terests of the community are as follows : 



1. Committee on Farm Production. 



2. Committee on Marketing. 



3. Committee on Securing Farm Supplies. 



4. Committee on Farm Finance and Account- 

 ing. 



5. Committee on Communication and Trans- 

 portation. 



Similarly, the five committees that attend to 

 the community's social interests will deal with : 



1. Education. 



2. Sanitation. 



3. Recreation. 



4. Beautification. 



5. Household economics. 



The work of most of these committees is indi- 

 cated sufficiently clearly by their titles ; for example, 

 the committee on production can do much good by 

 improving the breeds of livestock in a community 

 through cooperative purchases of pure-bred males. 

 It can encourage the formation of corn, poultry, pig, 

 cattle, canning and gardening clubs, which have 

 already demonstrated their value in the sections 

 where they have been established ; and it can carry 

 on useful studies of the type of agriculture best 

 fitted to local conditions. 



In the same way, the committee on marketing 

 can secure the standardization of the community's 

 products and thus obtain better prices than are pos- 

 sible when nondescript goods are dumped upon the 

 market. The committee can also search out the 

 best markets, make contracts on a large scale which 

 will be more favorable than any individual can se- 

 cure for himself, and in many other ways econo- 

 mize in the selling of the community's goods. Even 

 if cooperative marketing is not actually resorted to, 

 the information which the committee collects can 

 hardly fail to be of great assistance to the individual 

 shippers. 



With the committee on farm finance and ac- 

 counting, the first duty is to ascertain what farm 

 enterprises can safely be financed.' This is only 

 possible when accurate accounts are kept and care- 

 fully analyzed. After this has been done, the next 

 step is to secure the most favorable terms for financ- 

 ing proper and sound enterprises. This is fre- 

 quently not difficult if the committee has thoroughly 

 mastered the subject and is able to put it clearly 

 before local bankers. Where the local bankers are 

 unwilling to finance genuinely productive enter- 

 prises at a reasonable rate of interest, the committee 

 must consider other ways of securing capital. One 

 of the simplest plans for accomplishing this is a 

 credit union or cooperative credit association. The 

 essential features ,of this plan are that a group of 

 farmers organize themselves to receive deposits and 

 make loans. By keeping the expenses down to a 

 minimum, it has been possible in some cases for 

 such associations to pay interest on deposits that 

 is within one per cent of the interest it charges on 

 loans. 



Cooperation on the part of rural communities 

 can do as much to alter these conditions as it can 



