rendering its best service to the people of the State. If it has not met 

 all expectations, it is largely because its facilities have been almost 

 trivial as compared with the work it has been expected to do. The de- 

 mands that come to the College from the folks on the farms and in the 

 rural schools are far and away beyond the facilities for meeting them. 

 The capacity of the College for effective resident teaching is taxed much 

 beyond its limits this year in caring for the 968 students; and the- 

 student body is increasing at the rate of 150 students per year. The- 

 mere increase in number of students makes demands on teachers and 

 equipment that few persons understand. It is not merely a question 

 of finding a place where students may sit, but desks, microscopes, 

 special apparatus, animals, library facilities, and the like. 



The work of the College is for the people. It is the people of the 

 State that make the demands and the College looks to the people for 

 its support. To carry forward the work which is being crowded upon 

 the College in greater volume and with greater persistency each year,. 

 greatly enlarged facilities must be provided. 



Bills are now before the Legislature of the State providing for the 

 further buildings needed immediately, and for the increased main- 

 tenance which must come if the College is to meet the demands of the- 

 state work. It is the purpose of this circular to state certain facts re- 

 garding the College which the people of the state should know. 



Regarding the work of the College, Dean Bailey stated during the 

 3909 Farmers' Week: "We are conducting reading-courses with les& 

 than 16,000 farmers and farmers' wives in New York, yet there are a 

 half million such in the State. We are reaching at this moment less- 

 than 7,000 teachers, but there are 40,000 school teachers in the State- 

 and hundreds are being prepared each year. We are reaching 65,000 

 children this year, out of one and one-half million in the elementary and 

 liigh schools of the State. We are conducting demonstrations or test 

 work on some 300 farms out of the 227,000 in the State. We are teach- 

 ing one student for about every 500 farms. In this College of Agricul- 

 ture, large as it has grown to be, we yet have less than one student to- 

 each rural township in the State. There are probably more farm boys 

 and girls in any one agricultural county in the State than are now in 

 this College of Agriculture. All this is in spite of the fact that the 

 number of students is increasing so rapidly that we cannot properly 

 keep up with the work. The value of farm property in New York in 

 the last census year was $1,069,723,895. The money appropriated for 

 maintenance of college education in agriculture is about one sixty-sixth 

 of one per cent, of the valuation. ' ' 



272^94 



