THE COMMUNITY'S EDUCATION (CONTINUED)
THE EXTENSION MOVEMENT
The era of modern agriculture in the United States began with the
passage of the Morrill Act by the Federal Congress in 1861. This made a
grant of public land to each state to establish a college for
instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts, and it has been the
influence of the "land-grant colleges," more than any other agency,
which has been responsible for our agricultural advancement. In 1888 the
Hatch Act made an annual federal appropriation to each of these colleges
for the establishment of an agricultural experiment station, whose
investigations, with those of the United States Department of
Agriculture, have been largely responsible for the scientific basis of
modern agriculture.
From the beginning the agricultural colleges realized their obligation
to bring the results of scientific investigations to the attention of
farmers as well as to their own students, and their faculties spoke
before meetings of state and county agricultural societies, granges, and
farmers' institutes. In 1875 Michigan was the first state to make an
appropriation to its State Board of Agriculture for conducting farmers'
institutes, and in the next twenty-five years most of the states
established systems of farmers' institutes either under their state
boards or departments of agriculture or under the agricultural colleges,
through which itinerant speakers addressed one or more meetings of
farmers in each county every year. These institutes grew in popularity
and led to separate meetings for farm women, and sometimes for children,
and in some cases permanent county organizations were created for
holding institutes with local speakers as well as for managing those
furnished by the state. Farmers' institutes have performed an important
service in the education of the rural community. Not only have they
given instruction in methods of agriculture and in the problems of
country life, but they have been an important means of bringing rural
people together in a common cause; they are a community activity and
strengthen the community bond. In many cases in isolated localities the
annual farmers' institute has been one of the few occasions at which the
people of the community get together, and has been looked forward to as
a social event. Furthermore, it was through experience with farmers'
institutes that the need of better means for bringing instruction to
rural communities was appreciated and other methods were developed.
It was but a few years after the establishment of the agricultural
experiment stations under the Hatch Act of 1888, that the colleges
commenced to realize that the results of their investigations would not
be extensively utilized by farmers unless other means were employed than
mere publication of reports and bulletins and addresses at farmers'
institutes and agricultural meetings. These were good, but they were
felt to be inadequate and it was evident that to secure the general
adoption of new methods some means of more systematic instruction and of
local demonstrations were necessary. The agricultural colleges came to
feel that they should have definite departments with men who could
devote their time to giving instruction to the people on the land. The
first appropriation for agricultural extension work was made to Cornell
University by the State of New York in 1894, but it was a decade later
before the leading agricultural colleges had established departments of
extension work. In general the early period of the extension movement
was chiefly concerned with methods of agricultural production and had no
definite program for the local organization of its work. This finally
came about through the county agent movement.
The county agent movement[47] had its origin in an effort to combat the
ravages of the Mexican Cotton Boll Weevil as it swept through Texas and
advanced eastward from 1900 to 1910. It was in 1903 that Dr. S. A. Knapp
was commissioned by the Federal Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson,
to devise methods whereby the Texas farmers might be shown how they
could grow cotton in spite of the weevil. He soon found that progressive
farmers who were using the cultural methods which the entomologists had
found to be successful for raising an early crop, were able to raise
fairly good crops before injury became serious. He therefore employed
practical farmers to go among their neighbors and get them to agree to
give a fair trial to the methods advocated by the government, i.e., to
demonstrate their practicability. Those making the trials were called
"demonstrators" and their neighbors who came to follow their example in
testing the new methods were called "cooperators" and were called
together at the "demonstrator's" farm to see the results of his work and
to receive instruction from the "demonstration agent" who supervised the
work for the government. As this work was in charge of practical farmers
more or less known locally, it appealed to the farmers as a
common-sense method, the results spoke for themselves, and the demand
for the work spread rapidly. Dr. Knapp found that the county was the
best unit for the work of the supervising demonstration agent, and he
soon came to be known as the county demonstration agent, which was later
contracted to county agent or county agricultural agent. The whole
movement came to be called "the farmers' cooperative demonstration
work." Three new features in agricultural instruction of farmers were
involved in this system; it was more or less cooperative on the part of
a local group of farmers; it used the demonstration method of teaching,
i.e., the farmer demonstrated to himself by his own trial; and a local
county agent was employed for the supervision of the work. It soon
became apparent that merely trying to circumvent the depredations of the
boll weevil would not solve the problem and that instead of raising only
cotton as a cash crop the farmer must diversify his crops so as to raise
more of the foodstuffs consumed on the farm and to have other products
for sale. This involved the application of the demonstration method to
the growing of corn, legumes, hogs, etc., in short, it involved the
whole field of farm management and agricultural practice. The work of
the county agricultural agents was liberally supported by local business
men, commercial clubs and railroads, and the General Education Board, as
well as by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In 1909 the Mississippi
legislature passed the first act permitting counties to appropriate
funds for this work, and this was followed by most of the southern
states within a few years.
The Report of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission in 1909
called attention to the need of a national system of agricultural
extension work in charge of the agricultural colleges, and congressmen
and agricultural leaders in the North who had observed the success of
the county agent movement in the South commenced to feel that county
agricultural agents might be equally valuable in the North as a means of
local agricultural education. As a result, the first county agricultural
agents in the North were appointed by the Office of Farm Management of
the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 1910 and 1911. In 1912, 113 were
employed in cooperation with the state agricultural colleges and local
county organizations in the North and West. The success of the work of
these agents and of the extension work of the agricultural colleges led
to a general demand from the agricultural interests of the country for a
federal appropriation to the agricultural colleges for establishing a
system of extension work the chief feature of which would be the
employment of county agricultural agents who would supervise field
demonstrations by the farmers on their own farms. This resulted in the
federal Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which made an annual appropriation to
each land-grant college "to aid in diffusing among the people of the
United States useful and practical information on agriculture and home
economics and to encourage the application of the same ... through field
demonstrations, publications, and otherwise, ... to persons not
attending or resident at said college." This act is notable in that it
established the most comprehensive national system of non-resident
instruction in agriculture and home economics of any country, and
recognized the necessity of de-centralizing this instruction by having
it carried on by agents in the counties who could have immediate and
continuous contact with individual farmers and groups of farmers.
As the work of the county agents in the South grew more permanent they
found that it was more efficient if they worked with and through local
groups of farmers, and community agricultural clubs were quite widely
organized, but no strong county federation was developed, except in West
Virginia, where the local clubs formed a county organization which was
called a Farm Bureau. The term Farm Bureau originated in Broome County,
New York, in 1911, when the first county agent in that state was
employed by the Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, the Lackawanna Railroad,
and the U. S. Department of Agriculture. As the number of county agents
rapidly increased in the northern states it soon became apparent that if
their work was to be of the greatest service to the farmers for whose
benefit they worked, that it should be supported and managed by the
farmers themselves rather than by business interests. The Farm Bureau
Association, composed of farmers throughout a county, soon came to be a
prerequisite to the placing of an agricultural agent in a county, and
with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act and of state legislation
accepting its provisions and appropriating state funds contingent upon
similar appropriations by the counties, this became the usual procedure.
The county farm bureau association cooperates with the state college of
agriculture and the U. S. Department of Agriculture in the employment of
the county agent, and the annual membership fees together with county
appropriations pay the expenses of the work other than salary. The
affairs of the farm bureau association are in the hands of the usual
officers and executive committee, who report to an annual meeting of the
membership. Further than this the method of organization varies in
different states. In most of the northern and western states there is a
local committee in each community which arranges for the demonstrations
and meetings to be held by the county agent, and there is no further
organization of the local membership, but in a few states definite local
organizations or community clubs with officers and regular meetings
have developed. In either case, however, the unit of local organization
and interest in the work of the farm bureau is usually the community,
although its executive administration is on a county basis.
As the extension work came under the local control of these
organizations of farmers, the objectives of the work were more largely
determined by the farmers' point of view. Whereas the original purpose
had been to "extend" to the farmer the better methods of agriculture
discovered by the experiment stations and the federal department of
agriculture, the program of work came to be largely determined by the
particular needs and problems of the local communities in a given
county. The farmers conferred with the agent--their agent--and pointed
out their greatest difficulties. The program of work was then a matter
of determining what demonstrations and instruction could be arranged to
meet these problems, under the direction of the county agent and with
any assistance possible from the state agricultural college. With the
rapid growth of Farm Bureaus,--for on June 30, 1918, there were 791 farm
bureaus with approximately 290,000 members,--the movement became truly a
farmers' movement rather than a mere "extension" of the work of the
agricultural colleges, though the close affiliation with them
constituted its strength and furnished its leadership.
It so happened that almost as soon as the Smith-Lever Act became
effective the world was plunged into war and marketing problems became
more and more important. Whereas in the first decade of the county agent
movement interest had been chiefly in better methods of production, it
now rapidly shifted to include better methods of marketing and the
development of cooperative selling associations, whose organization was
assisted by the farm bureaus wherever they were needed and practicable.
The entry of the United States into the World War greatly accelerated
the farm bureau movement. "Food will win the war" was the slogan which
challenged American agriculture. The number of county agents in the
North and West increased from 542 to 1,133 within the year ending June
30, 1918. It was the county agent system which formed the mechanism
through which the federal government secured the whole-souled
cooperation of the farmers of the United States under peculiarly trying
conditions. The winter of 1917-18 was severe and seed corn was unusually
poor. As a result, the available supply of sound seed corn in the spring
of 1918 was the lowest on record in the face of the greatest need for a
bumper crop. Had it not been for the remarkable organization developed
through the county agents and the farm bureau system of the entire
country, the corn crop of the great Corn Belt would have been far below
normal. As it was, nearly a normal acreage was planted and an abundant
harvest secured. The role which the agriculture of the United States
played in the World War has never been adequately written or
appreciated, but it was full of as much romance and heroism as were the
industries which commanded the headlines of the press. Dr. Bradford
Knapp, for many years in charge of the county agent work in the Southern
States after the death of his father, its founder, has called attention
to the fact that during the war "of the four great activities or
industries in America, agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and
transportation,--one alone--agriculture, stood the test, and that mainly
because there was already in existence an organization extending from
the United States Department of Agriculture through every state
agricultural college ... to the counties and the farmers, by which
information was rapidly disseminated and farmers were made aware of
conditions of what must be done to win the war."
It was inevitable that such an organization growing rapidly during a war
should develop an unusual solidarity, and this was but strengthened by
the difficulties which agriculture encountered with the cessation of
hostilities. During the war several states had formed state federations
of the county farm bureau associations and in November, 1919, a
convention was called at Chicago for the formation of a national
organization, which resulted in the formal organization of the American
Farm Bureau Federation[48] in March, 1920, with 28 states represented,
and a membership in county farm bureaus of 400,000. In the next two
years the southern states, which previously had developed no strong
county organizations, rapidly adopted the farm bureau idea, and when the
American Farm Bureau Federation held its second annual meeting at
Atlanta, Ga., in November, 1921, it included 35 states with a local
membership of 967,279.
I have dwelt at length upon the growth of the county agent and farm
bureau movement, because there is probably no one agency which has done
more in the last decade toward the integration of rural communities
throughout the United States or which has had a larger educational
influence on all aspects of country life. The farm bureau usually
organizes its local work by communities and in large numbers of counties
the community areas have been defined for the first time by the county
agents. The value of this organization by communities was repeatedly
shown during the war. For example, in New York State it was possible
for the county agents to organize meetings on the Agricultural
Mobilization Day called by the Governor on April 21, 1917, in 1,089
communities, with an attendance of 85,075 persons, upon only a weeks
notice. In several of the states which have encouraged community
organizations, a very definite effort has been made to develop an
all-round program of community improvement. Thus the West Virginia
extension service has invented a community score card[49] with which
several communities have scored themselves for three successive years in
order to make an analysis of their social situation and to enable them
to outline a program of work for the solution of their local problems.
Several of the states are now employing specialists to assist the farm
bureaus in their problems of community organization.
The county organization of extension work has been unique in its
educational methods; methods which have large significance for all
movements for rural progress.
First, its educational method is that of the demonstration carried out
by farm people under the expert direction of paid county leaders in an
effort to solve the immediate problems of the farm and the farm home. It
builds on the experience, point of view, and interests of its pupils,
who learn under the supervision of a teacher chosen by them, through a
process which involves their making real experiments in finding the best
solution of their problems. No class of people, here or elsewhere, has
ever had opportunity for the training in the scientific attitude and
point of view which American farmers may now receive, and on account of
the nature and organization of their work they are steadily and surely,
if not entirely consciously, adopting the method of science. The
consequence of this movement in the social and political development of
this country cannot be foretold, for the scientific attitude must
finally be the basis of all true democracy.
Secondly, the program of work--the subject matter of the educational
method--is largely chosen by the people themselves, but with the help of
experts employed by them to supervise its execution. Here we have an
institution arising from the land, wholly democratic in spirit and
polity, yet recognizing the services of experts and employing them for
its own purposes. In the county farm bureaus, and the organizations to
which they have given rise, there is developing a new use of science
both in the educational methods and in the employment of scientifically
trained leaders, in the service of and directed by a democracy--a
democracy no longer provincial but of national scope in that there is
real cooperation between the local community, the county, the state, and
the nation.
Lastly, the extension movement recognizes that only by the development
and training of the largest amount of enthusiastic, voluntary, local
leadership can its work have a foundation which will make it permanent.
It thus recognizes an essential factor of all social organization, i.e.,
the power of personal leadership in shaping the public opinion of the
group, and it consciously undertakes the development of intelligent
initiative as a means of social progress.
When one has observed the feeble beginnings of this movement only a
decade ago, and has witnessed its growth to the present nation-wide
system, promoting plans for national organizations for cooperative
marketing, he appreciates the power of science, education, and
organization as new forces in the life of the rural community, whose
future influence one would be rash to prophesy.
This account would be misleading if it failed to indicate that the
extension movement has given attention to the problems of the farm home,
of the mother and the children, as well as to those of the farm
business. In 1910, girls' canning clubs were started in the Southern
States and young women were employed to supervise their work. Very soon
the mothers became interested and before long home demonstration agents
were appointed to work with the agricultural demonstration agents. In
1916 home demonstration work was in progress in 420 counties in the
South. A few home demonstration agents were employed by farm bureaus in
the Northern States prior to 1917, but the additional funds appropriated
by Congress for food conservation work during the war caused a rapid
increase in their number and women's work in the North received its
chief impetus during the war. The Smith-Lever Act specified that its
funds should be used for extension work in home economics as well as in
agriculture, but it was not until the farm bureaus commenced to employ
home demonstration agents and to organize the women for their support
that work with the farm home became established on a permanent basis. In
most of the northern states the farm bureau is now organized on what is
called the "family plan," that is, it includes in its program of work
projects dealing with the farm for men, with the farm home for women,
and with club work in agriculture and home economics for boys and girls.
In many of the states a separate agent is employed for each of these
lines of work and the women are organized in a separate department of
the county farm bureau and have their own local farm women's clubs. In
New York State the women's work has been further differentiated by
organizing it as a County Home Bureau which with the Farm Bureau forms
the County Farm and Home Bureau Association.
During the war the home demonstration agents gave their attention to
food conservations and clothing, but as a permanent program has
developed the local clubs of farm women have shown a lively interest in
problems of health, home management, care of children, education,
recreation, and civics. They have found that the problems of the home
cannot be solved without an effort to create better community conditions
and "community housekeeping" has attracted an increasing interest. The
present aims of the women's work have been aptly phrased in the Home
Bureau Creed written by Dr. Ruby Green Smith, associate state leader of
home demonstration agents in New York:
The Home Bureau Creed
"To maintain the highest ideals of home life; to count
children the most important of crops; to so mother them that
their bodies may be sound, their minds clear, their spirits
happy, and their characters generous:
"To place service above comfort; to let loyalty to high
purposes silence discordant note; to let neighborliness
supplant hatreds; to be discouraged never:
"To lose self in generous enthusiasms; to extend to the less
fortunate a helping hand; to believe one's community may
become the best of communities; and to cooperate with others
for the common ends of a more abundant home and community
life:
"This is the offer of the Home Bureau to the homemaker of
to-day."
Nor should we fail to recognize the part which the boys' and girls' club
work has had in the extension movement. Space will not permit any
adequate account of its origin and growth, or of its methods and
influence. No movement has done more to redirect and give dynamic to the
rural school than has the club work; nor has any movement done more to
train leadership among the coming generation on the farms. Commencing
with corn clubs for the boys, canning clubs were soon organized for the
girls, and later pig clubs, potato clubs, calf clubs, sewing clubs,
cooking clubs, and clubs are now organized with various projects
covering almost all phases of agriculture and home economics. These
clubs may be called the Junior Farm Bureau, for in them farm children
are receiving a training which will mean much for the future
organization of country life. The public confidence in the work is shown
by the fact that in 1920, 500 banks in the northern and western states
loaned nearly $900,000 to club boys and girls for financing their
projects.[50] As a result of the school exhibits of the products of the
club work, many a community fair has been started, and as a result of
club picnics and play days community picnics or festivals have become an
annual event in many places and have brought better feeling and
increased pride and loyalty to the community. In 1919, 464,979 boys and
girls were enrolled in club work.
Thus the extension movement started by the agricultural colleges and the
United States Department of Agriculture has become a national movement
of rural people, men, women, and children, whose strength is largely due
to the fact that it has been the means of organizing the local
communities and of bringing them together in county organizations, which
with the aid of state and national funds and supervision, employ trained
executives to stimulate and supervise the work of the local groups. It
is a unique agency for the education and organization of rural life
which is giving the American farmer a new position in the life of the
nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] This movement can only be sketched in barest outline. It is fully
and authoritatively discussed in another volume of this series by Prof.
M. C. Burritt, entitled "The County Agent and the Farm Bureau." See also
O. B. Martin, "The Demonstration Work." Boston, The Stratford Co.
[48] For a full discussion of this movement, its objectives and
accomplishments, see O. M. Kile, "The Farm Bureau Movement," Macmillan,
New York, 1921.
[49] Nat. T. Frame, "Lifting the Country Community." Circular 255,
Extension Division, W. Va. University, 1921.
[50] See "Status and Results of Boys' and Girls' Club Work, Northern and
Western States," 1920. George E. Farell. U. S. Dept. of Agriculture,
Department Circular 192.