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logues, reports, and publications. The government, therefore, acted as a clearing house of information, as an advisory bureau for the schools, and as a coöperative medium between the schools and the various associations which might be of assistance to the schools. In 1915 this work was organized in the States Relations Service, and the activities were extended into broader fields.

To facilitate contact with the teachers of agriculture, the States Relations Service maintained a card index of practically all American teachers and investigators in the profession, which, with the similar index of experiment station workers, served as a source of personnel information for institutions in search of experienced teachers. The direct aid that it rendered to the teachers of agriculture required many conferences with educators and numerous visits to colleges which give instruction to teachers of agriculture and to schools which give courses in agriculture. In 1923 about five thousand high schools in the United States were giving some instruction in agriculture, and in one year investigators of the Office of Experiment Stations traveled 38,000 miles in twenty-eight states to visit schools and to attend gatherings.

Regional and state conferences of directors, supervisors, and teachers of agriculture invited repeated attention. In the annual conference of state supervisors for vocational agricultural education and of teacher trainers for agricultural teaching, federal agents took an active part. In some states they attended summer conferences of agricultural teachers which were held at the agricultural colleges. At Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and at Hampton Institute in Virginia, conferences were frequently held with negro teachers from neighboring states.

At these and at numerous other personal conferences the federal staff members would give the conferees the advantage of their knowledge of educational practices in various schools, and would suggest plans for making the studies productive of immediate results. This was especially effective in colleges and schools which conducted highly specialized courses, and where home-project work was especially encouraged.

These conferences were followed up through correspondence, personal advice, and materials for use in teaching. The Service coöperated in preparing courses of study in agriculture for ele

mentary schools, and books for these schools were written in coöperation with state departments of education and state colleges and experiment stations. The Service coöperated with the teacher-training forces in various states, and supplied them with classified lists of all departmental publications, lists of materials that might be utilized by teachers, and offered suggestions as to how teachers might use particular Farmers' Bulletins in their work. Similar work was performed in connection with the teachers in service, and publications conforming to their special needs were sent to them. To assist teachers in visual instruction, lantern slides were pedagogically arranged and sent out. Many were distributed on circuits, and some were used in nearly every state, as well as in Canada, France, and Guam. Other illustrative material supplied to the schools included photographs and charts. Sometimes experimental courses were conducted by the Service at certain high schools and their results given to other schools. Accordingly the management of school gardens and of home-project methods were objects of considerable attention. The Service coöperated with the Association of LandGrant Colleges and with the American Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations in making reports on problems pertaining to collegiate instruction in agriculture. Kindred reports were sometimes rendered in coöperation with the National Educational Association.

In rendering further aid to teachers, the Service coöperated with the Federal Board for Vocational Education in the preparation of publications for use in secondary schools and in the arrangement of courses of study in such practical subjects as poultry and swine husbandry and truck cultivation. Examples of coöperation with other government services are the publication of lessons on forestry, which were prepared by the Forest Service; and courses in wood lot management, which were given in coöperation with the Forest Service in some Maryland high schools. The Service also coöperated with the Bureau of Education in the study of agricultural educational problems, especially in the matter of adapting the instruction to the current needs of rural life. Besides the literature that was prepared in coöperation with other agencies for class-room purposes, there was miscellaneous literature including special bulletins for boys' and girls' clubs, normal schools, and special experiments in schools.

Coöperating with the Office of Experiment Stations, local institutions thus made the teaching of agriculture in the elementary and high schools an established feature in American education within a short period."

Relations with the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations-the Association of Land-Grant Colleges. The Office of Experiment Stations has always maintained close relations with the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, which since 1920 has been known as the Association of Land-Grant Colleges, which is composed of representatives from the land-grant colleges and experiment stations, and the Bureau of Education, as well as the Department of Agriculture. In a measure the Office owes its existence to the persistent efforts of this organization.

Usually a representative of the Office has been delegated to the annual conventions of this association, and has participated extensively in its activities in such matters as the presentation of papers and editing of the proceedings, and the rendering of information and advice on topics of general collegiate interest.

At national exhibitions the Office has frequently coöperated with the association in presenting collective exhibits. The early farmers' institute work of the Office was closely related to the association. Virtually all of the early extension work proper of the Office was assisted by the association's committee on extension work.

Relations with Foreign Agricultural Experiment Stations. Shortly after the Office was organized in 1888, the Director represented the Office at various European experiment stations and established relations with foreign scientists. Subsequently, numerous foreign investigators visited American institutions and brought information to the Office of Experiment Stations. Through correspondence and exchange of publications, the Office became acquainted with the methods and results of research in all of the leading foreign experiment stations, and abstracts of foreign publications were made for American readers.

69 Further consideration of this work is given in the Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture, a monograph of the Institute for Government Research.

To facilitate regulations with foreign agricultural institutions, a card catalogue was prepared, and within five years, the Office had access to the activities of the experiment stations in Asia and Africa as well as those of Europe. This contact was continued. Relations to Farmers' Institutes. A major function of the Office of Experiment Stations was necessitated by the spontaneous and almost universal establishment of farmers' institutes in the several states. When the first institutes were established, is uncertain. They may have descended from some of the agricultural societies which flourished immediately after the Revolutionary War. The New York Agricultural Society patronized the itinerant lecture plan for farmers as early as 1843. After the passage of the LandGrant College Act of 1862, the farmers' meetings assumed organization form, acquired the appellation "farmers' institutes," and procured the patronage of the states for regular instructional sessions of from three to four days at various intervals. In 1862 the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture held a four-day public meeting. Within ten years it rallied several of the twenty-nine agricultural societies of the state to organize annual meetings to be called the "Farmers' Institutes of Massachusetts." Meanwhile, local progress had been made in Connecticut, New Hamphire, and Vermont.

At this time the American Institute Farmers' Club of New York City held weekly meetings in Cooper Union, which were attended by farmers from the vicinity as well as by city residents interested in agriculture. Its activities included those of a veritable clearing house, and it received from five to ten thousand letters a year. It was a dominant force in the advancement of American agriculture, and it received recognition by the Commissioner of Agriculture in his annual report for 1869.

In 1869 the University of Illinois began to hold farmers' institutes, apparently without any permanent organization. Six years later, the Michigan Agricultural College inaugurated an elaborate system of farmers' institutes, permanently maintained. This plan spread rapidly throughout the West. Professors from the nationally aided universities were engaged to lecture to the farmers, as was the custom in Germany. Soon the legislatures of many states

joined in the movement and made appropriations for the maintenance of the institutes, which by 1903 were held in all of the states but three. The institutes were held under the direction of the state boards of agriculture in some states, and under the supervision of the state departments of agriculture in others.

The Office of Experiment Stations, being in contact with the colleges, began in 1889 to collect information regarding farmers' institutes, and the Director stated that the Office had been strongly attracted to the institutes as a means of communicating to the farmers the results of the work of the experiment stations.

The need of greater national unity in the work of the institutes was partly met in 1896 by the organization of the American Association of Farmers' Institute Managers (Workers). To secure still greater unity of effort, this organization during the following year requested the Secretary of Agriculture to organize a division of farmers' institutes within the Department. This idea was later elaborated upon by the Director of the Office of Experiment Stations in an official proposal for a national agency to promote the interests of the farmers' institutes. He urged that since the farmers' institutes were already so closely related to the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, it would be logical for the Office to act as such a central agency.

This agitation for a central clearing house continued until 1903, when the institute work was placed upon a more substantial basis by the act of March 3, 1903 (32 Stat. L., 1147, 1164). This law established a precedent for annual appropriations for the investigation of farmers' institutes in the United States and in foreign countries, "with special suggestions of plans and methods for making such organization more effective for the dissemination of the results of the work of the Department of Agriculture and the agricultural experiment stations and of improved methods of agricultural practice."

To administer this law, a Farmers' Institute Specialist was appointed to act under the direction of the Office of Experiment Stations. During the first year of administration, he visited numerous states, and formulated plans to strengthen the state organizations, to create a national system of institutes, and to promote the coördination of the institute work throughout the country.

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