Ce iA YF ghee “ao ete bite ¢ 5 heme 5 id 2 ; <<» { ' _ ° oy ° BY DICK J. CROSBY, OVS AGRICULTURAL CLUBS Of the Office of Experiment Stations. * \ _ [Reprir rrom YEARBOOK OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FoR 1904.] J Dh 5 a > mI i) 2 52 : ‘i : CONTENTS. Page. Mhercomurexmilbipat toe st louis Exposition. — =-2 =. J.2-sse-=.cesseseaeeeeee 489 Pevelapaientio: boys: clubsin Illinois: : 2:25... 6 54s. .aae+ 222 eso e ee oan ee eee .08 June 30, hoeing 21. 252 eae ee cae eee erate . 05 September 25 ahuskime conten aeeee eee oa See eee . 10 Cost:o raisin ecormaneee esse eee ee ee eee eras ae . 83 The total yield of corn was 23 bushels. The value of the corn was $3. The gain. was $2.17. These Winnebago boys also have their lecture courses where, among other things, they learn about corn judging, from Professor Holden, of Iowa; stock feeding, from Professor Henry, of Wisconsin; birds and their benefit to the farmer, from Professor Dearborn, of the Field PLATE LXVIII. Yearbook U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1904 Boys’ EXHIBIT OF CORN AT THE ST. Louis EXPOSITION. ‘T1| ‘GYOINOOY ‘ALNLILSN| SHSNHV4 ALNNOD ODVEANNIM 4O NOISSAS «SAOG Yearbook U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1904. PLATE LXIX. BOYS’ AGRICULTURAL CLUBS. 493 Columbian Museum; and the kind of country schools for country people, from Professor Davenport, of Illinois. They have access to excellent traveling school libraries, containing a liberal sprinkling of standard agricultural books, and the bulletins and other publications _ of the State experiment station and of the United States Department of Agriculture, and at commencement time receive diplomas or other certificates for the reading done during the year. They have been on several long excursions, including two to the Lllinois College of Agri- culture at Urbana, and one to the lowa Agricultural College at Ames. This year they go to the Wisconsin College of Agriculture at Madison. At these agricultural institutions great pains is taken to show the boys the magnificent equipment in buildings, apparatus, and live stock and to take them over the field experiments. They come home talking intelligently of high-protein corn, draft horses, and market grades of beef cattle. Gradually but surely it grows upon. them that it is not all of farming to drudge; that there is abundant opportunity to plan, study, investigate; that intelligence and culture are needed on the farm, and that the proper exercise of these qualities will yield as abundant returns in the country as in the city. BOYS CLUBS IN OTHER STATES. Illinois is not alone in this forward movement. Iowa, Ohio, and Texas are keeping step with her in the boys’ club work, and Indiana and New York have taken up the boys’ institute work—the former with 15 meetings last year and the latter with 72. Indeed, it may be said that New York, with its 20,000 or more members of ‘* Junior Naturalist clubs,” leads all other States in the children’s club move- ment. But these are nature-study clubs, quite different from agricul- tural clubs, and they are for girls as well as boys. There are also girls’ clubs in these other States—LIllinois, lowa, Ohio, and Texas but the limits of this article will not permit a discussion of girls’ clubs or nature-study clubs. In Ohio the boys’ agricultural club movement was started about two years ago by the organization of a club in Springfield township, Clarke County, under the direction of Superintendent of Schools A. B. Gra- ham. The work at this place does not differ materially from that in Illinois. It includes the testing of varieties of corn, garden vegetables, and flowers, and some work with insects, wild flowers, weeds, and soils. There are now 16 boys’ agricultural clubs in 10 counties of Ohio, with a total membership of nearly 700. These have been organ- ized under the auspices of the Ohio State University, which has sent out during the past year 1,012 packages of vegetable seeds, 565 pack- ages of corn, and 1,261 packages of flower seeds, besides a large amount of litmus paper for use in testing the acidity of soils. 494 YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. The Texas club movement was organized only a little over a year ago in connection with the Texas Farmers’ Congress, but the member- ship of the Farmer Boys and Girls’ League is now over 1,200. In Iowa the first club was organized by County Superintendent of Schools Cap E. Miller, at Sigourney, Keokuk County, in March, 1904. This - club now has a membership of 335 boys, and its first year has been one of remarkable activity and progress. It has held several meetings, has made several excursions, including one to Ames and another to one of the largest ranches in the State, and it has conducted a series of school fairs that are worthy of brief description. SCHOOL FAIRS. Karly last fall each of the 147 school districts in Keokuk County held a school fair, where the boys exhibited all sorts of fruits, vege- tables, and farm crops which they had grown. The best and second best articles of each class were later entered at township fairs—one in each of the 16 townships in the county (Pl. LXX, fig. 2). In connec- tion with each fair a programme was rendered consisting of talks and papers on corn, potatoes, peanuts, apples, and other fruits and crops, together with recitations and musical selections. All of the township fairs were attended by the county superintendent of schools and the president and the secretary of the boys’ club of the county, the latter acting as judge of the agricultural exhibits. The first, sec- ond, and third prize articles from each township fair were then exhib- ited at a county school fair. This was held in the high school building at Sigourney, December 24, and was attended by over 1,000 people. The exhibit contained more than 3,000 articles and was probably the largest collection of yaried agricultural products grown by boys ever brought together in this country. Professor Holden and Mr. Christie, of the lowa Agricultural College, assisted in judging the agricultural products, and the former conducted a corn-judging school in which all of the boys took part. The programme rendered in connection with the fair included music, recitations, a debate on the subject ‘* Resolved, That Corn is more Useful than Cotton,” and a composition contest in which each graded school in the county was allowed one representative. The general theme of the compositions was ‘‘An Interesting Plant,” each contestant presenting a paper on some particular plant. There were 10 compositions on corn, 3 on wheat, 3 on the tomato, and 1 or 2 on each of a dozen other common farm crops or flowers. Superin- tendent Cap E. Miller, who was the organizer and moving spirit in all this work, says of the fair: It was the greatest educational meeting ever held in the county. The interest which it created has spread in its influence to all the work of our rural schools and has caused the farmers of our county to organize a farmers’ institute. * * * Yearbook U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1904. PEATE IEXX: Filia. 1.—WINNEBAGO COUNTY, ILL., BOYS IN THEIR FIELD OF SUGAR BEETS. Fia. 2.—RICHLAND TOWNSHIP SCHOOL FAIR IN KEOKUK COUNTY, IOWA. BOYS’ AGRICULTURAL CLUBS. 495 The school-fair movement has been self-supporting. By means of a small admission fee all expenses of the fairs and of securing music, judges, and speakers were paid and a balance of about $50 was left in the club treasury. This isa matter of no little importance. A self- supporting enterprise, if worthy, commands greater respect than one which depends upon charity or private subscription for its support. And without doubt this is a worthy enterprise. Aside from the good which has come to its members through their activity in organizing and directing a remarkable series of educational meetings, much has been accomplished toward arousing enthusiasm for better, more whole- some country life, and toward laying the foundation for a broader educational movement along agricultural lines. Laying the foundation is about all that can be hoped for in this direc- tion during the next few years. It was forty years after the corner- stone of collegiate agricultural education in the United States was laid at the Michigan Agricultural College before the agricultural courses had been carried much above the basement line. But in the past four or five years the structure has gone up by leaps and bounds. The col- lege courses have been developed and strengthened, the work of the experiment stations has been better systematized, and now greater attention is being given to extending the influence of these institutions beyond the bounds of the college campus. One of the direct results of this great forward movement in agricultural education, the aim of which is to extend agricultural education of some sort—formal or informal, advanced, intermediate, or elementary—to every grade of school attended by rural pupils, has been the organization of the boys’ agricultural clubs. These clubs, though at present somewhat crude in their organization, are accomplishing much good, and are worthy of encouragement. SUMMARY. (1) Through their agricultural clubs the boys have been affected in many ways. Individually they have been led to observe more closely, to recognize good and bad qualities in the crops they have raised, and in the insects, fungi, and other things affecting these crops; they have met and learned to solve some of the problems in the improvement of crops; they have learned that improvement in one direction is not always, or even usually, accompanied by improvement in all directions; they have learned the value of labor, the cost of producing crops, and how to keep simple accounts with different crops; they have been encouraged to read good literature, and have learned some of the sources of agricultural literature; their views have been broadened by contact with others and by visiting institutions of learning, highly developed farms, and other points of interest, and, finally, the power 496 YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. of taking the initiative has in many cases been strongly developed in them. As one of the direct results of the sugar-beet experiments, a few of the Illinois boys will raise sugar beets this year as a commer- cial venture. One sugar factory has already contracted with boys in Winnebago County to raise 20 acres of beets. (2) Collectively the boys have learned the value of organized effort, of cooperation, and of compromise, and the social instinct has been developed in them—a matter of great importance in rural districts, where the isolated condition of the people has always been a great drawback to progress. (3) The influence upon the communities at large, the parents as well as the children, has been wholesome. Beginning with an awakening of interest in one thing—better seed corn—the communities have rapidly extended their interest to other features of rural improvement, with the result that in the regions affected by the boys’ agricultural club movement there has come about a general upward trend to the thoughts and activities of the people. fs: aS eprd toe, he ee teh eA ae LIBRARY OF CONGRESS @ 002 745 9341 ®