880. HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
The CHarrman. Are you not going into a sort of show business 
there, when you get lantern slides and all that sort of thing? 
Doctor Truz. I would be glad to explain just what we mean by 
that. 
The Caarrman. I wish you would. 
Mr. Grarr. You say that ought to be $10,000 instead of $5,000? 
Doctor Trug. Yes; that ought to be $10,000 instead of $5,000. 
Mr. Grarr. Right after the word ‘‘ provided?” 
Doctor Trux. Yes. We have at present $5,000. That is used to pay 
for the salaries of an officer called a farmers’ institute specialist, who 
has a salary of $2,000, and one clerk, who at-present has a salary of 
$840. The balance of the money for the most part is used in paying 
the traveling expenses of this agent, who must necessarily, in order to 
do the work that we desire him to do, travel about in the different 
States, confer with the State directors of institutes, and speak at rep- 
resentative meetings and come in touch with the members who are doing 
the work in the institutes. Now, the institute system of the United 
States has grown to be avery large enterprise. According to the data 
which we have collected more thoroughly this year than ever before, 
there were held during the past year in the United States about 3,700 
institutes, and these were attended by over 900,000 persons. You can 
see that that is a very large force of people to receive instructions 
through the institutes, and if this work can be properly organized and 
made most efficient, it will be a great agency for the proper dissemina- 
tion of the results obtained by the Department and the agricultural 
experiment stations. 
At present instruction is given in those institutes by about 4,000 
different people. Of that number about 900 are men who are paid to 
attend the institutes in a general way in the respective States. They 
are called regular institute lecturers. The other 3,000 are local men 
largely who are called in to give a lecture or two at the individual 
institute. - 
Now, as the institute system develops in this country, there is a 
greater and greater demand that the institute lecturers and speakers 
shall not only give their own experience as successful farmers in some 
particular line, but that they shall be able to interpret that experience 
in the light of what the experiment stations and institutions have deter- 
mined and the general experience. That makes it necessary that this 
body of lecturers should keep up to date in these matters that relate to 
the improvement of farm practice and the results of scientific investi- 
gation along those lines, and everywhere we find that the State super- 
intendent of the farmers’ institutes are trying to get men who can do 
this, and failing that, because it is hard to find them, they are tryin 
in various ways to train these men so that they will be better adapte 
to do what the farmers want them to do in the institutes. 
One large feature of our work, as we have planned it, is to help these 
farmers’ institute lecturers get the information which they need, and 
to supply them, in any reasonable way, with facilities for making the 
best use of this information. 
The Cuarrman. Right there, Doctor, that was just what you told 
us last year and we inserted the item, but we had no idea you were 
going into sending lecturers around yourself. We thought you were 
going to supply the information for these lecturers, but we did not 
think you were going into what I might call the show business, with 
