Instances in which your county or locality has been served by your state agricultural college or by the experiment station.

The difficulty of the farmer in coping with animal disease or plant disease by his own effort.

Facts to show that money has been saved to your community by the state agricultural department or experiment station.

Why the people of the cities of your state should pay taxes to support the department of agriculture.

Facts to show that your state department of agriculture and your experiment station are really “means of cooperation” in your state and county.

Extent to which the farmers of your locality actually cooperate through the governmental machinery of the department of agriculture.

Consult your parents or farmer friends as to ways in which the work of your state department of agriculture, agricultural college, or experiment station should be extended.

Sentiment among the people of your locality, especially the farmers, as to the usefulness of your department of agriculture, experiment station and agricultural college.

Get information from your county agent, or from your state agricultural college, as to the states having the best organized departments of agriculture, and then get information as to their points of excellence.

The advantage of a state fair (A) to the farmer, (B) to the state.  The fair as a means of cooperation.

The management of your county fair (if any).

AGRICULTURE A NATIONAL ENTERPRISE

It does one state very little good to fight hog cholera or the boll weevil unless neighboring states do likewise.  Inferior service in one state by its department of agriculture is a detriment not only to the farmers of that state, but to those of other states and of the country as a whole.  States gradually learn from one another and frequently adopt from one another the best methods that are developed.  This is a slow process.  The agriculture of our nation must be considered as a great national enterprise, and not as forty-eight separate enterprises.  This was made evident during the recent war.  Hence the necessity for national control.

EARLY NATIONAL SUPPORT OF AGRICULTURE

Washington and Jefferson, like other founders of our nation, took the keenest interest in agriculture.  But in the early years of our history little was done by the national government for its promotion, except by a rather generous policy of disposing of the public lands (see Chapter xiv).  In 1820 a committee on agriculture was for the first time created in the House of Representatives, and in 1825 a similar committee in the Senate.  In 1839 Congress made its first appropriation for agricultural purposes, $1000, to be spent in gathering information about crops and other agricultural matters.  This was a small beginning when compared with the $37,000,000 appropriated by Congress for agricultural purposes in 1918.