496 Promotion of Agriculture in U.S.A. [sept., 



portance of the traffic in agricultural produce in the United 

 States may be obtained from the fact that in the year ended 

 June 30th, 1909, 191,381,772 tons of such produce were carried 

 by the railway companies, the receipts for which amounted 

 at a very low estimate to ^76,000,000, or probably well over 

 22 per cent, of the entire receipts of all the companies for 

 goods traffic. 



It appears from an inquiry recently made by the Office 

 of Experiment Stations of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, that out of 103 railway companies, fifty-two of 

 them were engaged to a greater or less extent in rendering 

 assistance to the agricultural interests of their districts. It 

 is recognised that in order that a railway company may profit 

 to the fullest extent from "the agriculture of the districts served 

 by its lines, it must, in a new and undeveloped country, do 

 more than construct railroads and carry goods — that is, it 

 must itself take steps to encourage and promote the industry 

 on which it mainly depends. 



Agricultural Instruction Trains. — This method of assist- 

 ing agriculturists is widely used by railway companies, 

 and fifty-two of the leading railway companies in the United 

 States and Canada were engaged in this form of dissemi- 

 nating information in 1910. 



The method followed has been for each company to pro- 

 vide at its own expense a locomotive, luggage van, one or 

 two coaches fitted up for lecture purposes, together with a car 

 provided with dining-room and sleeping accommodation for 

 the lecturers. The latter are usually furnished by the agricul- 

 tural college or experiment station of the state in which the 

 train is run, and are sometimes supplemented by specialists 

 from the national and state departments of agriculture. 

 Each train is equipped with material to illustrate the instruc- 

 tion to be given, e.g., if the instruction is to be in dairying, 

 dairy cattle are frequently carried, together with dairy appa- 

 ratus. The train is advertised in advance by means of 

 posters and newspaper notices giving the hour at which it 

 will arrive at each stopping-place, the length of time it will 

 remain, the names of lecturers, and the subjects. When the 

 train arrives at a station the farmers are invited into the 

 lecture coaches, and are addressed by the experts for thirty 



