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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



Bankers Association appointed a special Agricultural Commission from 

 among its members, which Commission I have the honor of representing 

 upon this occasion, and, on this very day, October 15, 1914, the American 

 Bankers Association now in session in Richmond, Va., is devoting its entire 

 morning's program to an agricultural symposium. 



Probably the most interesting feature connected with the work of the 

 American Bankers Agricultural Commission has been the publication of 

 the Banker-Farmer, a review of the bankers's activities for a better agri- 

 cultural and rural life, which has been circulated to the extent of about 

 twenty-five thousand copies per month, and which reaches some nineteen 

 thousand bankers of the United States regularly. Its able editor, Mr. B. F. 

 Harris, of Champaign, 111., Chairman of the Bankers Agricultural Com- 

 mission, has performed a great service for the bankers of the Union. It 

 was due, largely, to the work of Mr. Harris and to that of Mr. Joseph W. 

 Chapman, Vice-President of the Northwestern National Bank, of Min- 

 neapolis, and for several years President of the Conference of Bankers 

 Agricultural Committees, that the appointment of these special Agricultural 

 Committees from the Bankers Associations has spread to almost every 

 State in the Union. 



The Agricultural Committees from the various State Associations have 

 many individual problems confronting them, and each Committee works 

 along its own lines, but the general result of the work of these Committees 

 has been largely the same, in that they have uniformly taken an active 

 interest in the development of the Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges 

 of the various States, and increased appropriations for the same, in the 

 extension of agricultural education in the rural schools, and, particularly, 

 in the work of adopting the rural high school plan in place of the old time, 

 single room school buildings scattered all over America, in the building 

 of good public highways, and, LAST but not least, in the extension of the 

 field demonstration work of the United States Government to practically 

 every State of the Union, through the passage of the well known Smith- 

 Lever Bill, which now permits every State in the Union to obtain Govern- 

 mental appropriations for field demonstration work, contingent upon the 

 State, the county or the municipality appropriating an equal amount for 

 such assistance. 



It seems to be the general concensus of opinion that the work of the 

 UNITED STATES DEMONSTRATION AGENT, or, as he is better known 

 in many parts of the north and middle west, the COUNTY AGENT, is 

 of the greatest importance to our rural communities. This Demonstration 

 work permits the agricultural college of each State to be taken direct to 

 the farm, instead of taking the farmer to the college. And it is to the 

 extension of this field demonstration work to every county of our State 

 that the Bankers Association of Texas has devoted its principal efforts. 

 Our Agricultural Committee has appointed a banker Sub-Chairman of 

 Agriculture in every county in Texas; two hundred and forty members in 

 all. These bankers have worked with their County Commissioners, Boards 



