e 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
pra