AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND EXPERIMENT STATIONS

The practice is growing, however, to transfer the work of investigation and education to the state agricultural colleges and experiment stations which have been established and are conducted with the cooperation of the national Department of Agriculture.  These institutions have a corps of highly trained specialists and educators and are equipped with laboratories and experimental farms where research may be carried on under the most favorable conditions.  The agricultural colleges not only educate young men and women within their walls in agriculture and related subjects, but carry on extension work throughout the state for the benefit of the farmers and the people of rural communities.  With the development of these institutions the state department of agriculture is left with almost purely administrative and regulative duties.  This seems to be the wiser plan of organization.

Write to your state commissioner of agriculture or to the secretary of your state board of agriculture for a copy of the law, or other published document, containing a description of the organization of your state department of agriculture and its work.  Also ask for, if available, a list of publications issued by the department, from which you may later select such as may seem to be useful.

Write to your state agricultural college, or to the experiment station, for its latest report showing the work that it has done, and for a list of available publications.

In writing to public officials for materials for class use, it is well to send but one letter for the class or school, and to request the smallest number of copies that will serve the purposes of the class.  Public officials are busy people, and the publications for which you ask cost the people of the community money.

The members of the class may compete, if desired, in formulating a suitable letter, and a class committee may select the best, or formulate one on the basis of suggestions from the class.

Materials collected in this way should become school property, and the class should be conscious that it is accumulating a library for later classes as well as for themselves.  Study and report on the following: 

The organization of your state department of agriculture, its officers and how chosen, its divisions and their work.

The work done at your state experiment station (individual reports may be made on the several important lines of work, or on particular investigations or discoveries of interest).

The character of the extension courses offered by your state agricultural college.  Courses given in your own community.

Instances of regulative work done in your state and county by your state department of agriculture.