Ill ■' III L^^ iiiiniiliiiiil: •■■:h'::!iii;ii!!i •tii'iJiiUi! i^cto Jiorfe i?tatt College of Agriculture at Cocncll ®nibec£(itp Stiiaca, iS. j^. 3ti6rarj> S 533.L92 Cornell university Library THE RELATION OF THE COUNTY FARM BUREAU AND THE COUNTY AGENT TO THE COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL DATA RELATING TO AGRICULTURE BY W. A. LOYD Reprinted from the Proceedings of THE Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Extra Number, May, 1919. The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002855249 THE RELATION OF THE COUNTY FARM BUREAU AND THE COUNTY AGENT TO THE COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL DATA RELATING TO AGRICULTURE THE RELATION OF THE COUNTY FARM BUREAU AND THE COUNTY AGENT TO THE COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL DATA RELATING TO AGRICULTURE County-agent work in the United States had its origin in an effort to prevent the threatened destruction of the cotton in- dustry in the south by the cotton boll weevil. The first federal demonstration agents were appointed in the state of Texas in 1904. While their efforts were devoted primarily to assisting planters to destroy the pest or hold it in check, they inaugurated a movement to promote the growing of substitute crops to take the place of cotton on the devastated areas. ,This soon devel- oped into a demonstration movement throughout the whole south for diversification of crops as a thing desirable in itself. Agriculture in the south was in a most unfortunate condition. There had been little or no improvement since the close of the civil war. Cotton was still king — ^but a despotic sovereign who was yearly impoverishing his subjects. The live stock industry had languished and on many plantations not enough corn was grown to feed the work stock. Home gardens were unknown or neglected, and only by means of a crop mortgage system did the planters manage to keep their business going while the one cash crop matured. When the cotton wa;^ finally gathered there was little cash return to the growers, as the proceeds for the most part went to the merchant holding the crop mortgage. At first the federal agents were appointed to cover several counties. The demand for intensive work brought about the appointment of county agents in 1907, and in 1908 county agents became an integral part of the demonstration plan. Boys' com clubs and girls' tomato clubs, which were at first by-products of the campaign for the control of the boll weevil, soon became popular. The movement attracted the attention of all the south- em states and the reports of its striking successes quickly spread throughout the northern states. Almost every county in the south had its com champion whose achievement not only excited interest and rivalry at home but was held up to the farmers of 442 W.A.Lloyd m.v.h.a. the corn belt states of the north as something worth emulating. The National corn exposition and the state com shows featured the achievement of Jerry Moore, a South Carolina boy, who pro- duced a record acre yield of corn. The movement promised a new birth of agriculture in the south and attracted the attention of the General education board which lent its resources to its support. District demonstration work began in the northern states in 1909 by cooperation between the United States department of agriculture and the Ohio experiment station. In 1911 four county agents were appointed experimentally in the north, the first being in Broome county. New York. In the following year a small appropriation was secured from congress for introduc- ing this work into the northern states, and 115 agents were ap- pointed during the fiscal year 1912-1913, The movement attracted widespread attention and was momentarily threatened with a mushroom growth as a result of propaganda and financial pat- ronage on the part of well-meaning philanthropists. In a few states the movement was unduly stimulated, and for several years it suffered from hostility on the part of the farmers who looked upon it as a superimposed agency of whose ulterior pur- pose they were suspicious. On the whole, however, the work was appreciated and enlisted the support of the most progressive farmers. Passage of the Smith-Lever or cooperative agricultural ex- tension act by the United States congress in 1914 made available a large appropriation for promoting extension work in agri- culture and home economics through cooperation between the United States department of agriculture and the several state agriculture colleges. This placed county-agent work on a foun- dation of permanent federal and state support. The appropria- tions of this act wiU reach their maximum in 1923, by which time it was expected the extension of county-agent work to the entire country would be completed. The states relations service was created to represent the department of agriculture in its cooperative and other relations with the state agricultural col- leges. The declaration of a state of war with Germany in the spring of 1917 brought as an acute national necessity the immediate 1917-1918 Bate for Agricultural History 443 organization of agriculture for the greatest efficiency. For the purpose of promoting food production campaigns, finding and distributing seeds and fertilizers, handling the farm labor prob- lem, utilizing to the full the available team and tractor xK)wer, providing farm credit, and many other purposes, a trained local agricultural leader was immediately necessary. The congress as a part of its war program made emergency appropriations for thfe immediate extension of county-agent work to every agri- cultural county in the United States within this fiscal year. This , work was entrusted to the governmental and state agencies al- ready engaged in promoting its development. The United States depaxtment of agriculture and the state agricultural col- leges began a campaign to acquaint the people with the war sit- uation as it affected agriculture, urgiiig cooperation on the part of the county authorities in the employment of county agents. In the states outside the cotton belt the woA had developed at a rate of about a hundred agents per year, there being on July 1, 1917, 542 agents in the thirty-three states, or a total of 1402 in the whole country. Today the number in the northern and west- ern states has increased to 1103, while in the whole country there are 2299 agents. As incident to the development of county-agent work there has come about a complete and orderly organization of agri- culture and rural life through an association known as the farm bureau. This organization developed first out of the necessity of the work of the county agents and is one of tlieir greatest contributions to agriculture. The first county agents worked with individuals and sought by means of demonstrations to con- vince farmers of the value of improved methods. Only a com- paratively small number of people could be reached in this way and the "advice" of the agent was sometimes misunderstood. If the work was to be of widespread value and reach the great- est number, it must be sympathetically received and have the organized support of the people it was created to serve. The county agents, therefore, began the systematic organization of farmers. In the south this took the form of local farmers' clubs ; while in the north, with a more highly developed and complex agriculture, it took the form of county organizations of farmers into associations for promoting agricultural development and 444 W.A.Lloyd m.v.h.a. improving rural life. Their principal purpose at the outset was to assist the county agent in carrying on his demonstrations and in giving them widespread publicity. These organizations took a variety of forms and were known by a variety of names, such as agricultural improvement associations, better farming asso- ciations, and county chambers of agriculture, but they have been gradually standardized both in type and name and now are gen- erally known throughout the entire northern states as farm bureaus. The county farm bureau is an organization of farmers and their families for the purpose of cooperating with the state and federal government in all their extension activities in agricul- ture and home economics in the county and for assisting these public agencies in the development of a county program of work adapted to the conditions and necessities. The governing body is an executive committee composed of men and women, each member of which is chosen as the leader of some part of the county extension program. In each township or community a committee appointed by the president of the farm bureau with the approval of the executive committee is charged with the development and execution of that part of the county program of work which affects that particular community. The project leader on the executive committee and the corresponding mem- bers on the various community committees make up special pro- ject or subject-matter committees which assist in formulating and carrying out a county program of work. The farm bureau is a triumph of agricultural democracy. It is educational from within. It is the climax of agricultural organization wherein the people of the county express them- selves in an organized and authoritative way in regard to their own affairs. It completes the agricultural educational trinity — the United States department of agriculture, the state agricul- tural college, and the county farm bureau. It brings to the department and the college the farmers' view-point and leavens the theoretical discussion of the agricultural scientist with the hard common sense and practical experience of the farmer. It affords opportunity to the people to go to school to each other and to learn from their own successes and failures. It unites with state and nation in the employment of experts to assist in 1917-1918 Data for Agricultural History 445 the accomplishment of its program of work. It develops and popularizes the best county practices in agriculture and home economics and makes immediately available all the discoveries of science. It gives to the experimentalist and research worker a new point of view and brings to his laboratory and study the unsolved problems of the farm and farm home. It is peculiarly American — its counterpart does not exist anywhere in the world — and just a& the geniuses of our political institutions are revolutionizing political thought and bringing liberty to the people of the whole world, so the farm bureau is pointing the way to the complete and efficient organization of our own country and is promoting the agricultural enfranchisement of rural people. Such, briefly, is the genesis of the county-agent and farm- bureau movement. It had its birth in the threatened destruction of a great industry in the south by a horde of invading insects from beyond the Rio Grande, and it has reached its full growth in the face of a menacing invasion by the hordes of a new Attila from beyond the Atlantic threatening destruction to all our ideals and industries. May its success in its initial performance be a happy harbinger of the contribution it is to make to our people in this great crisis in our national life ! This is not the place nor is there time to speak of the accom- plishments of the county agents and the farm bureau. The sav- ing of a great industry and the creation of a new and better agriculture in a region devastated by a great war are epoch- marking events in the history of agriculture in the south attrib- utable to the county agents. When the great war came to Amer- ica the farmers of the north and south alike became our first line of defense, the county agents the captains of the army of production ; and to the efforts of American farmers acting under the leadership of county agents and through their own farm- bureau coinmittees the civilized world owes a debt of gratitude. American agriculture has even now made a most important contribution toward winning the great war. With intelligent leadership and eflScient organization it will, in the years to come, play an even more important part in keeping the world a decent pla;ce to live in. * The world is now so busy making history that it may have 446 W.A.Lloyd m.t.h.a. some impatience with those who merely write it, but even in the turmoil of war there is place for those who search for and seek to interpret the lessons of the past. Agricultural history in the United States is a most fertile field for the student and one which has been only partly explored. There are a few agricul- tural economists who have followed the broader lines of agri- cultural development and worked out something of the philos- ophy of agricultural history. Even this has been imperfectly done because, for the most part, the study and treatment have been confined to an interpretation of statistical data and of the migration of populations. The great body of local agricultural facts is almost altogether an unexplored field. No one has thought it worth while to record the simple happenings of coun- try life. Unfortunately the world's written history is made up for the most part of accounts of its cities, its wars, its politics, and its commerce. For the life of the country people we must rely on the fragmentary expressions of an occasional writer. Until recently there had been no systematic effort to collect and group such facts as were known. Through the Carnegie insti- tution of Washington an organized effort is now being made to assemble agricultural historical data. This lack of interest is in no way due to dearth of material, for no field of historical research could be richer in human inter- est and stronger in its appeal to the imagination than that of agriculture. The settlement of the great Mississippi valley and the quick conversion of the wilderness and prairie into farms is a mine of romance and tragedy, of paean of victory and dirge of defeat, of sunshine and shadow so filled with human interest and historical values that it needs only to be studied to be ap- preciated. That it is unexplored is chargeable principally to a lack of means of doing the work and to the inherent difficulties of the task. The open country has had heretofore no central agency for expressing itself or for recording itself. Those who would explore the richness even of its current historical devel- opment had to grope more or less helplessly from one individual to anotiier following one lead to an unsatisfactory conclusion while a mine of undiscovered truth lay unnoticed on an adjoin- ing farm. Two years spent in such work which took the writer into every county and almost every township in a Mississippi 1017-1918 Date for Agricultural Histori; 447 valley state demonstrated to him the hopelessness of individual investigation without local cooperation. Perhaps it is the glimpse behind the curtain which it was his happy privilege to secure which has kept him strongly sympathetic with the untold story of the farm and hopeful that before it is lost for- ever some means will be found to assemble and some worthy hand to record it. Not only does the story itself deserve to be told because it is a good story and because the telling of it would help in under- standing and interpreting statistical data, but, if we are to have a stable agricultural population we must have a people who not only value the farm for the profits of its business but love it for the beauty of its present and the glory of its past. I mean by this that every agricultural county, every farm community, should in an organized way collect and record the matters of local interest and importance in the community life and in the industrial development of the countryside. There are hundreds of counties in the great Mississippi vaUey where it is even yet possible to get at the beginnings of things: who located the first homestead, and where it was situated ; the site of the first house, or barn, or mill ; the introduction of the first sheep, or hogs, or cattle, their breeding and development ; the first field of wheat or com; the first dairy herd; the first silo. These things are worth recording — ^many of them are worth markiag. There are heroes of the farm that are as worthy of remembrance as those who have "plucked their glory from the cannon's mouth," and there are shrines of the country as worthy of marking with bronze or granite as any on the fields of battle. There is much, alas, that has been lost forever. It has been my good fortune to see the beginning of rural consciousness and rural pride in local rural achievement. Do you think there is likelihood of the dairy industry languishing in a community enterprising euough and thoughtful enough to put up a granite shaft by the roadside pro- claiming to the passersby. "To this Farm in 1879 Simon Mc- Quirk brought the first Holstein -cattle in this county: four cows and a buU driven overland from Chicago"? Or will the country boy as quickly seek the city and its distractions if he grows up believing that he is a part of great things and that the world recognizes them as great? 448 W. A. Lloyd COMMUNITT OOMMI'l'lTEE No. 1 M. V. H. A. Chairman Liming soils Dairy Improvement Project Committee 1 Agricultural history Agbicultubal Officers President 1 HiSTOET Home sanitation Vice-president Com clubs Secretary-treasurer Other members Soils Member Live stock / Chairman Agricultural history- / 1 1 OoMMUNirr 1 1 Committee / Member Home economics Boys' and girls' club work No. 2 Horticulture Chairman 1 Drainage soils 1 Agricultural history 1 Tomato clubs / Canning demonstrations Silos Diagram showing adaptation of county farm bureau to the ooUeetion of local his- torical data. Each township or community in the county has some one designated on the community committee to coUeet local historical facts. (See illustrative com- munity committees nos. 1 and 2 above.) There are as many such community com- mittees as there are communities or townships in the county. The various community committeemen in charge of the collection of historical data together with the mem- ber on the executive committee in general charge of this work make up an agricul- tural historical committee of the farm bureau. 1917-1918 Data for Agricultural History 449 On the chart is shown the adaptation of the farm bureau tO' the work of collecting historical data relating to agriculture. In every community there is someone who is interested in such things and who would gladly assist in discovering and collecting local data. Such a committee should be a permanent committee of every farm bureau, and archives should be provided for it in the fireproof vault in the Hbrary at the pounty seat. Cooperat- ive relations should be established between the county historical society, library associations, and the farm bureau. The county agent may often be the agricultural historian, and he will be a better county agent if he knows, appreciates, and sympathizes with the struggles, the triumphs, and the defeats of the people he serves. Country life as a result of a great war finds itself organized with trained leadership; its face is to the future; it is full of the work of today — ^but is it too much to hope that the splendid sacrifices of the American farmer in a world crisis may find their historian as well as the valorous struggles of our victorious troops in France ; and that on the town plaza alongside the mon- uments we shall erect to our military heroes we may also place a tablet saying in simple words, "When a world war threatened our allies with famine and democracy with destruction, the farmers of this country increased their wheat acreage three-fold and more than doubled the number of swine"? W. A. LliOYD United States Department of Agkicttltube Washington ii