UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 CIRCULAR No. 209 
 
 (March, 1919) 
 
 Reprinted June, 1921 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF THE FARM BUREAU 
 
 By B. H. CROCHERON 
 
 The time has come when the farm bureau should pause to consider 
 what is its real function in the life of the nation. At present the farm 
 bureau movement, the greatest organization of farmers that the world 
 has ever seen, is very certain that it is on its way, but somewhat unde- 
 cided whither it is going. 
 
 Farm bureaus are a natural outgrowth of the desire of American 
 farmers to do two things. First, to unite for mutual self-help and 
 cooperation along any line that may be needed, and second, to get 
 into close and intimate touch with those institutions of public enterprise 
 and of the government which have accumulated the information neces- 
 sary to make farm life more prosperous. 
 
 Therefore we may well stop to consider the real purpose of the farm 
 Jpureau and what phase of farm bureau work should be most empha- 
 sized in the future. In so doing I desire only to consider what is best 
 for the farmers of California. Primarily I am not interested in the 
 farm bureau unless it is the best type of organization for the farmers 
 of the state and unless, in turn, it will do its part towards making 
 American homes and lives better and set this nation upon a still firmer 
 foundation than it now possesses. I am interested in farm bureaus 
 only as an aid toward that end and if a more efficient organization can 
 be devised to carry on this work the farm bureau should give place 
 to it. I am interested far less in the perpetuation of farm advisors or 
 of other agricultural extension work. I consider them only in relation 
 to the welfare of the people of this state and country. They have no 
 other function than to aid the development of rural life, which in turn 
 is the greatest stabilizer in our national existence. 
 
 The farm bureaus started in several states under various names 
 and under plans which were widely divergent. Even today the farm 
 bureaus of America vary so widely in their administration, organiza- 
 tion, projects, and development as to be almost unrecognizable as 
 similar organizations occupied in similar work. This is chiefly because 
 
 * An address delivered before the Annual Farm Bureaus Conference. Printed 
 by request of the Conference. 
 
2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 the farm bureau was new and untried, so that in the beginning no one 
 had the foresight or temerity to set down on paper a definite method 
 of work or a definite plan for the fulfillment of those objects which 
 were in the minds of all farmers. The experience of the last few years 
 has been so scanty that even now we hesitate to say that any one plan 
 is best among the several that have been advanced or that any one 
 specific sphere of work is alone the function of the farm bureau. 
 
 California was somewhat fortunate among the states in that its 
 farm bureau movement developed later than in some others and had 
 something of a background upon which to plan out the type of organ- 
 ization and method of work. A definite constitution and by-laws were 
 laid down in the fall of 1914, which have been almost unanimously 
 followed by the thirty-seven counties organized during the past five 
 years. • Thus, in California, we have a unity of organization which is 
 coincident in all the counties and which articulates right down to the 
 farm bureau center itself. The particular features of the California 
 type of organization which are most worthy of note are those which 
 stress and emphasize the rural community as the unit of organization. 
 These communities, or farm bureau centers, are represented upon the 
 board of directors. Necessarily, therefore, that board itself represents 
 the entire county or those portions thereof that have membership in 
 the farm bureau. 
 
 Another type of farm bureau organization prevalent in some other 
 states, contemplates no community organizations or farm bureau cen- 
 ters. In that type, the board of directors represents lines of work or 
 projects and are preferably chosen at or near the county-seat in order 
 that they may easily get together for conference. This, it seems to us, 
 tends to stress the county-seat or chief city of the county as the ema- 
 nating point for the work rather than the rural community which is 
 the natural gathering place of the people who live on farms. Indeed, 
 it was felt in California that there was some danger in having the 
 board of directors consist of men who largely came from that central 
 point and were interested in special projects since they might not truly 
 represent the whole farm population of the county. 
 
 At first in some states the farm bureaus were not promoted by the 
 agricultural colleges. They were looked upon somewhat askance as a 
 dangerous and untried procedure which might wreck the move for 
 agricultural extension being promoted by the federal and state govern- 
 ments by means of paid extension workers. Later this fear passed 
 away and the colleges of agriculture came to welcome the farm bureau 
 as they saw more fully its possibilities of development and the progress 
 which might be made in agricultural extension work when it was 
 furthered by a large body of farmers who worked in close cooperation 
 with it. However, in this state, the value of the farm bureau has been 
 
Circular 20$ the FUNCTION" 6f THfi FARM BUREAU 3 
 
 fully recognized from the beginning. Therefore the administration 
 of this college has required every county that desired the services of 
 a farm advisor to first form a county farm bureau in which there were 
 20 per cent of the farmers in membership as an attest of their desire 
 for the work of the farm advisor amongst them. The wisdom of this 
 has been proven by experience in that no county of California has 
 ever permanently abandoned the work which has gone steadily for- 
 ward from that time until now, when 85 per cent of the farmers of the 
 state are represented in counties which have farm bureaus. It is evi- 
 dent that the small residue of l£> per cent could easily be encouraged 
 to consummate their organization if there were any hope of funds to 
 give them a farm advisor for their service. 
 
 In organizing the farm bureau the problem necessarily became at 
 once : what was this new farm bureau to do ; what was to be its sphere 
 of work ; how far was it to go in the various movements requested by 
 farmers; and finally, what was to be the relation between that farm 
 bureau and the government and the state agent placed in the county 
 to work on the extension of agriculture ? These problems in part are 
 still before us. Let us then look back to see what was the original 
 conception of the California farm bureau both as to its plan of organ- 
 ization and its sphere of work. 
 
 In planning the California type of farm bureau the constitution 
 was very carefully written so that no federal or state official might 
 have any direction over it. The organization was definitely and pur- 
 posely placed wholly in the hands of farmers elected from among their 
 fellow membership representing agricultural communities of the county 
 who would have in their hands the whole direction and determination 
 of the policies of the farm bureau. The belief upon which this was 
 based was that the farmers of California were wholly competent to 
 guide their own affairs, and that provided this board of directors ade- 
 quately represented the wishes of the members of their county, there 
 would be no doubt either of the definiteness of their plans or of the 
 propriety of their course since I believed essentially in the collective 
 wisdom of the farmers of the state. In order that these farm bureau 
 directors might really represent the wishes of their constituents and 
 might have frequent opportunity to gather together their desires and 
 proposals, it was planned that every farm bureau center should hold 
 a meeting once a month at which they might receive from their director 
 the report of the last directors' meeting held at the county seat, and 
 might signify to him their wishes and plans for the future. In order 
 that the farm advisor working with the farm bureau might have the 
 benefit of the opinions and knowledge expressed, and that he, in turn, 
 would have an opportunity for getting his advice to the farm bureau 
 centers, it was planned that in general he should be present at their 
 
4 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA — EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 meeting. The danger in this was recognized in that the farmers might 
 come to feel that because the farm advisor was there that it was the farm 
 advisor's meeting and not the farm bureau meeting. It was believed, 
 however, that by proper direction and supervision from the central 
 office the farm advisor could be held in his proper capacity as related 
 to the farm bureau and could be brought to understand and clearly 
 bear in mind that he had no other function so far as the policies of the 
 farm bureau were concerned than to give advice and consultation when 
 it was asked. 
 
 Persons who were conversant with farmers' meetings told us that 
 it would not be possible to continue to gather indefinitely the people 
 of any given community at a meeting once a month because they would 
 soon be tired of such a gathering and would gradually stop attending. 
 There was no experience upon which to base this conclusion except 
 that various itinerant agencies, such as farmers' institutes, had found 
 their attendance decreasing during the past generation. My belief 
 was that if a definite and permanent organization could be formed 
 which would have a programme of work based upon concrete and feas- 
 ible projects for the development of the community, the county, the 
 state, and the nation that the people would continue to come because 
 of the efficiency of the organization and because of their interest and 
 part in the work it was doing. This belief has been amply borne out 
 by the experience of the past five years, wherein the average attendance 
 at farm bureau centers in the state has steadily but slowly gained, and 
 while it was satisfactory in the beginning, it is still more so at this 
 date, when the average attendance at farm bureau centers in California 
 is forty-one persons. Not only have these farm bureau centers con- 
 tinued to increase in attention and interest, but they have been perma- 
 nent in their location, the percentage of those that have passed away 
 being so small as to be almost negligible, while the number of them has 
 now grown until there are 429 such community centers in California. 
 
 In all this time, however, the activity has been largely one of 
 organization and development. The most interesting feature of this 
 organization was that we did not at first form a statewide farm bureau 
 or a state board of direction wherefrom it was brought down to the 
 counties and later to the communities and ultimately to the people, but 
 that one by one these farm bureau centers were formed in California 
 by the people themselves wherever there was a group of persons who 
 felt it desirable to get together for their mutual development and im- 
 provement. The organization has grown from the ground up and 
 consequently is solidly set thereon. I do not believe that any other 
 factor than an absolutely unwise and malicious direction could now 
 wreck the farm bureau movement in California. 
 
-Circular 209 TH e FUNCTION OF THE farm BUREAU 5 
 
 The very nature of the farm bureau under the California plan has 
 made for a wide autonomy of the farm bureau centers whereby they 
 have developed their own programme and projects of work. While 
 the method under which the farm bureau centers are organized, main- 
 tained and directed is the same throughout the state, yet because the 
 problems of the communities differ, the projects they have stressed are 
 widely divergent. This was all expressly provided and desired. The 
 system of organization has worked out as planned with astonishing 
 success. * 
 
 But how about the purpose — the function of the organization ? 
 Was there a definite conception of what the farm bureau should do? 
 May I read you what was proposed as the function of the California 
 farm bureau at the time of its inception to see whether we have in any 
 way strayed from this original plan of action, and if so, whether this 
 divergence is wise or unwise : 
 
 A farm bureau is an organization of farmers and ranchers who combine to 
 promote agriculture through cooperative study of farm conditions. 
 
 Many types of farmers' organizations have long been existent. There have 
 been farmers' clubs, granges, institutes, unions, alliances, and others. Some of 
 these have been more or less successful, but many have passed away. Their 
 failure has usually been due to one or more of the following causes: (1) lack of 
 a distinct purpose to fill a definite need; (2) lack of membership to sufficiently 
 represent all classes of farmers and types of farming; (3) lack of cooperation 
 with other similar farm organizations; (4) lack of continuous and unselfish 
 leadership. 
 
 The farm bureau is distinct from all of these. It is not primarily a social 
 organization; neither is it essentially to unite farmers so as to lower prices of 
 stuffs bought and to raise prices of products sold. It is formed to bring together 
 for mutual cooperation those farmers who want to investigate the fundamental 
 problems that are involved in production on their farms. 
 
 Every state and territory has at least one "experiment farm" supported by 
 federal and state funds. These have been exceedingly valuable because the 
 results therefrom were noted by men whose business and interest it was to ob- 
 serve. The acreages of these farms were small; their crops were often meager — 
 and yet they have been worth millions beyond their cost because the records of 
 productions and the conditions under which they were grown were known and 
 noted. 
 
 Many of our farm problems are already solved on the farms of the nation. 
 Individuals have found the solution of vexing questions that are agitating the 
 experiment stations and agricultural colleges. But these solutions usually fall 
 out of sight unnoted or are known only to the man on whose farm they occur. 
 If these unknown and unnoted experiments could be gathered, they would at 
 once add much to our view of agriculture. 
 
 In America there are on the average more than 100,000 farms to each "ex- 
 periment farm." Obviously, if the results on some small percentage of these 
 could be viewed from the same standpoint as at the experiment farm, the benefits 
 would enormously outnumber the records achieved by the experiment stations. 
 It i3, of course, impossible to gather all this material or to note all the changing 
 conditions on farms. But it may be possible to gather together into one county 
 
6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA — EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 organization the wide-awake and interested farmers who will compare their re- 
 sults with those of others and, in a more or less scientific way, plan out experi- 
 ments and demonstrations on their own farms. Such is a farm bureau. 
 
 Fundamentally, then, a farm bureau for the county can be collectively a sort 
 of giant experiment station with several hundred observers who hold a monthly 
 caucus to compare results. 
 
 The farm bureau has a trained man to aid it: the farm advisor (see Circular 
 133). It is his business to help interpret results, to point out new lines of work, 
 and to deduce conclusions from the evidence at hand. The farm bureau can be 
 of greater value to the county than the farm advisor. Together, they can be of 
 more benefit than either alone. 
 
 Other activities may concern the farm bureau besides local research into 
 agricultural problems. 
 
 The farm bureau may be a sort of rural chamber of commerce and thus be 
 the guardian of rural affairs. It can take the lead in agitation for good roads, 
 for better schools, and for cheaper methods of buying and selling. Various sub- 
 sidiary organizations of the farm bureau, known as farm bureau departments, 
 may be formed, thus linking together persons of similar or identical interests. 
 Perhaps, most of all, the farm bureau can help promote the social institutions of 
 country life. Some rural neighbors are so starved for recreational meetings that 
 they will come out to anything from a patent-medicine show to a school meeting. 
 The farm bureau can help put more recreation into rural life. Every country 
 neighborhood ought to have some social gathering at least once a week. It is 
 almost as much needed as the spiritual congregations at the church, or the 
 educational assemblages of the children at the schoolhouse. 
 
 But very surely and insistently the farm bureau is not first and foremost of 
 these purposes — good and desirable as they may be. Perhaps the farm bureau 
 can help to buy cheaper and better seeds, can help to boost the local socials, can 
 encourage the faltering school teacher, can get out and talk for good roads — but 
 its first and surest function is to increase the local knowledge of agricultural fact. 
 
 This was written in 1915 as a part of the University circular on 
 the "County Farm Bureau." As I look over the list of farm bureau 
 activities I regard it as remarkable that we have so clearly followed 
 the lines indicated in the statement there laid down, and from my 
 rather intimate knowledge of the work of the California farm bureaus 
 I stand here today to say to you that the farm bureaus of California 
 up to this time and this point have stood solidly behind that platform 
 expressed in those few paragraphs. In other words, the California 
 farm bureaus have been largely an educational agency in the broadest 
 sense of the term. Their greatest contribution to the welfare of the 
 people has been their dissemination in an organized way of better 
 methods of farm life as they have seen it. Occasionally, when they 
 have seen the need of it, they have gone from this to take up the better 
 handling of economic problems as business concerns, or as the pro- 
 moters of business concerns. Personally, I have believed — and believe 
 today — that it is a proper function of the farm bureau to set up busi- 
 ness relations when they can do so in a better way — and by that I 
 mean better in the broad sense for all those concerned — better than 
 
Circular 209 TH E FUNCTION OF THE FARM BUREAU 7 
 
 existent agencies which are already doing the work. I do not believe 
 that the farm bureau should be an agency which attempts to squeeze 
 out the other members of the rural community or which should set up 
 a sort of agricultural trust to manage and operate all rural affairs. 
 I am glad to say that the farm bureaus in California have never per- 
 mitted this and that their actions in the past five years have shown 
 such remarkable judgment as to wholly justify the original preface 
 that the collective wisdom of the farmers of California enabled them 
 to guide competently their own affairs. 
 
 I have conceded that the chief function of the farm bureau is that 
 of an educational agency, and I have testified that the farm bureaus 
 in California have been chiefly an educational factor in the past. I 
 believe that this should be because most of our problems are first edu- 
 cational in nature, although they may later proceed from that to the 
 practice of what that education teaches. I may be permitted to quote 
 one or two instances of this. 
 
 Three years ago the hog market situation in California was unsat- 
 isfactory to both the farmers who produced the hogs and the packers 
 who bought the hogs, and an unintelligent survey of the surface indi- 
 cations might have led some to suppose that what was immediately 
 needed was to set up some sort of a machine whereby the packing 
 companies would immediately become displaced by some sort of a 
 farmers' organization which would undertake to take the hogs off the 
 farm and deliver them in cured form to the people. Such a scheme 
 would have required an enormous amount of money and might have 
 been doubtful of success, depending not only on the type of organiza- 
 tion and a high class management with expert knowledge of packing 
 and selling practices, but also upon the antagonism and strife in the 
 trade which would have ensued. Instead of that an educational idea 
 was brought from Australia by one of the farm advisors based on the 
 principle that the trouble with the hog market in California was caused 
 by three things: first, the farmers grew poor hogs; second, they sold 
 them in ungraded and undesirable sized lots ; and third, there was no 
 free competition in their purchase. The result of this was the inaug- 
 uration of a demonstration of the auction sales system as a method of 
 marketing hogs. This auction sale brought the hogs together from the 
 farmers to a central point. A committee of farmers graded them and 
 placed them in carload lots. Buyers came to that place and in the 
 presence of the farmers bought the hogs in an open market for the 
 highest bid. The result was that the packers got the kind of hogs they 
 wanted, in the right sized lots, at the highest prices they could afford 
 to pay. The farmers got the best prices obtainable in the open market 
 for the best hogs and the man who grew good hogs received a premium 
 over him who raised poor hogs. The plan succeeded well because it 
 
8 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 served a real need in the community and because it showed both the 
 farmers and the packers the real status of the hog market. It has 
 swept like wildfire over many of the counties of California, and al- 
 though still in its youth a quarter of a million dollars' worth of hogs 
 are sold each month under this system which, on the average, give at 
 least 1 cent per pound more to the farmers for their hogs than ever 
 was obtained before. The packers say that the hogs are better in 
 quality than were ever known in the state and the farmers say that 
 they get nearer the prices they think they deserve than they have ever 
 experienced. It is assumed that even the small number of auction sales 
 held in the state last year saved a quarter of a million dollars which 
 went directly into the pockets of the farmers of the state. This was 
 accomplished without setting up any elaborate machinery and without 
 causing the farmers to go deep in their pockets to support an extensive 
 plant which might never pay. It was made possible because educa- 
 tional thought had been brought to bear upon the problem and the 
 farmers, in turn, were advised of every change in the situation and of 
 the best methods for getting the results that they desired. 
 
 I need only mention one more result which is so large and far- 
 reaching as to quite beggar description, namely, that of the war emerg- 
 ency campaigns conducted by the farm bureaus at the instance of the 
 University of California and the United States Department of Agri- 
 culture. These campaigns sought to advise farmers what crops were 
 needed for the successful prosecution of the war which, of course, 
 meant the crops that would be in demand and which thereafter might 
 be expected to bring a fair price. Sometimes when these campaigns 
 were launched it was difficult for farmers to see wherein they would 
 derive a profit, but because they were based upon a real knowledge of 
 the conditions of the world's markets and because furthermore they 
 took into consideration the promotion of the permanent agriculture of 
 the state each one was founded upon a real knowledge of conditions. 
 An educational institution, the farm bureau, became the agency 
 through which each campaign was furthered in the county. Farmers 
 planted wheat although the price was low, but when that wheat came 
 to be harvested the price was higher than that of barley, and those that 
 had wheat and had followed the advice of the farm bureau found no 
 difficulty in their marketing problems. Farmers grew hogs in response 
 to the hog campaign, and while it did not then look possible to raise 
 hogs at a profit, by the time the hogs were fed and grown the price of 
 feed had been so reduced and the price of hogs so advanced that the 
 farmers throughout the state found that they had grown them at a 
 profit. In turn the sheep campaign was furthered because of the 
 prospective need of the government for wool. Where sheep were 
 economically maintained on farms they resulted not only in an imme- 
 
Circular 209 THE function of the farm bureau 9 
 
 diate profit to the farmers but in a permanent addition to California 
 agriculture. Diversification of crops which was furthered by these 
 war emergency campaigns upon a sound economic basis has lessened 
 unrest, has made for the local advancement of farm management in 
 its right sense, and has bettered the condition of California farming 
 more than any one thing in the last ten years. Farmers who were not 
 in touch with these campaigns, in their desire to help the food situation 
 of the government, often unwisely grew crops which were not later in 
 demand and which consequently they could not market. Some of 
 these still remain on their hands, although it is hoped that the difficulty 
 may be overcome within the next few months. I wish only to point 
 out that the farm bureaus in California have chiefly used educational 
 means to overcome their difficulties and in the main have been suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 Nevertheless, after all is said and done there does remain a residue 
 of problems, complications, and injustices which can only be solved by 
 farmers' organizations going ahead to better their conditions in any 
 legitimate way that seems to them feasible. I am perfectly in accord 
 with any well organized and considered movement of the farmers to 
 better the conditions of the state, and therefore of the nation, through 
 any means which may seem most feasible and desirable to the united 
 judgment of the farmers of the state as expressed through the farm 
 bureaus. I believe that the membership and direction of the farm 
 bureau is so representative and I believe that the collective judgment 
 of those who live on the land is so correct that if the farm bureaus are 
 given a full opportunity to consider rural problems and to understand 
 them in their various phases they cannot go far wrong. Therefore, I 
 have entire confidence in the future of this organization and the direc- 
 tion it will take provided it is kept as at present, so that the far-spread 
 membership of 20,000 may express themselves directly through their 
 representatives on the policies of the organization. If there is to be 
 a state farm bureau, it should be as democratic and representative in 
 its organization as are those of the counties. Its affairs should not be 
 handed over to a small executive committee, but should be managed 
 by a representative from every county. So long as the farm bureau 
 functions as a democratic institution which represents all parts and 
 parcels of the rural body politic, there need be no fear for the future. 
 
 In all this I have mentioned but seldom the county farm advisor 
 who has been the ever-present agent to aid this farm bureau in its work. 
 He is the representative of the federal and state institutions of agri- 
 culture in extending their work in the counties of the state and nation. 
 Already three thousand of these men are at work in as many counties 
 of the nation and more will follow. It is important that their position 
 should be understood and that their relation to the farm bureau should 
 
10 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 be clear, in order that we should not be confused in oar minds as to 
 the function of the farm bureau in distinction from that of the farm 
 advisor. These two have worked together so harmoniously that persons 
 are likely to confuse them. I believe, however, that the future of this 
 work, so far as the farm bureaus are concerned, is dependent upon the 
 drawing of a clear distinction between the work of the farm bureau 
 which is the farmers' agency and that of the farm advisor who is the 
 agent of the state and national governmental agencies. 
 
 The farm advisor is placed in the county for a specific purpose, 
 which is to extend the knowledge which the agricultural colleges and 
 experiment stations have gained through the intensive research work 
 of the investigators who are behind them. He is the field agent of the 
 agricultural forces of the nation. As such he does not represent the 
 farm bureau nor is he directed by the farm bureau, but rather he is 
 maintained as closely as possible in direct relation with the federal and 
 state governments. This is of the utmost importance. 
 
 The value of the farm advisor to the people of the county is in 
 having the unbiased judgment of an official who does not represent a 
 local situation or a local constituency, whose appointment and whose 
 term of office is not dependent upon the favor of local politicians or 
 even of certain influential farmers, but who represents the organized 
 agricultural forces of the government and the knowledge that they 
 have concerning the betterment of rural life. His value to the people 
 is in precise proportion to the extent to which he knows and tells the 
 truth. His only function in that county is to disseminate the subject 
 matter which has been slowly and painstakingly gathered by the agri- 
 cultural institutions, which, like great factories, are slowly but surely 
 grinding out the product of the knowledge of life. He may advise 
 the farm bureau upon its request as to the procedure which it may best 
 follow. He may cooperate with it and doubtless will cooperate with 
 it on most of the projects that it has under study, but in so doing he 
 must be clearly defined as a governmental official who is working for 
 the benefit of the whole people. There can be only three possible rela- 
 tionships between the farm bureau and the farm advisor. 
 
 The first would be to put the farm bureau under the direction of 
 the farm advisor and to have the farm bureau the official agency which 
 carried out the projects and purposes of the farm advisor, and there- 
 fore of those officials and agencies which directed the farm advisor. 
 Such a plan would imply that the farm bureau should not undertake 
 any projects unless approved by the government. As such it is clearly 
 inadvisable unless the farmers desire to exercise no initiative or judg- 
 ment of their own. 
 
 The second possible relationship is that the farm bureau should 
 direct the farm advisor, and that he should be a sort of secretary or 
 
Circular 209 TH e function of the farm bureau 11 
 
 manager for that farm bureau whereby he carried out the proposals 
 and plans of the organization. Such a relationship would soon result 
 in the farm advisor losing his entire significance and would in time 
 prevent his support from public funds. 
 
 The third relationship is that which we have conceived and prac- 
 ticed in this state, wherein the farm bureau and farm advisor are 
 separate and distinct instruments for the furtherance of agriculture. 
 The farm advisor is directed by the federal and state governments and 
 the farm bureau is directed by the farmers through their represent- 
 atives who are directors of the farm bureau. When the farm bureau 
 desires to carry on a project which is part, or wholly, in the nature 
 of agricultural extension, then that part may properly come within 
 the scope of the farm advisor. Then they mutually draw up a project 
 or written plan setting forth the piece of work they are to do, the 
 means by which they are to do it, and the results they hope to accom- 
 plish, and clearly distinguish which part in it is to be done by the farm 
 advisor and which part by the farm bureau. This brings them into 
 active cooperation on that particular project, but does not necessarily 
 mean that the farm bureau will always work with the farm advisor, 
 nor that the farm advisor is compelled thereby to join in every move- 
 ment that the farm bureau desires to further. It does not hamper the 
 farm bureau in its work and does not restrict it to those purely ex- 
 tension activities which are perhaps its chief function but from which 
 it may from time to time depart in the interests of the farmers of the 
 county. I believe it would be most unwise to attempt to put the farm 
 bureaus of this, or any other state, under the direction of the United 
 States Department of Agriculture, or of the State College of Agri- 
 culture. I think it would deprive them of their primary reason for 
 existence, which is to represent the free and untrammeled action of 
 the farmers of the country. Likewise, I believe it would be most un- 
 fortunate for the farm advisors to be placed under the direction of the 
 farm bureaus, since it would deprive the farm advisors of their real 
 mission, which is to represent the state and federal agencies of agri- 
 culture. Placed under the direction of the farm bureau, the farm 
 advisor becomes no more than a farm bureau secretary or manager 
 and can have no more than local usefulness and a local boundary to 
 his horizon. 
 
 I have regretted to observe that some states have not always been 
 clear in their vision of either the farm bureau or the farm advisor. 
 They have confused the two in the minds of the people and have 
 sometimes handed over the direction of the farm advisor to the farm 
 bureaus, and then found those farm bureaus departing from a strict 
 line of educational work as was perhaps necessary in the county. This 
 brought the farm advisor and the farm bureau into embarrassing re- 
 
12 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 lations, and, in turn, the United States Department of Agriculture and 
 the College of Agriculture found their agents embarking upon projects 
 which were neither federal nor state functions and which could not 
 properly be undertaken by their agents under the guise of public 
 necessities. 
 
 I conceive that there might possibly be three types of work going 
 on in a county at once : first, that work which the farm advisor is 
 carrying on alone because it is a matter in which only the federal and 
 state governments are interested and which directed him to do it; 
 second, that work which the farm bureau is carrying on alone because 
 it is a matter in which neither the federal or state governments desire 
 to enter but which the farmers of the county desire to promote them- 
 selves; and, third, that type of activity upon which the farm bureau 
 and the farm advisor work jointly in cooperation. I anticipate that 
 in the future, as in the past, 90 per cent of the activity of the farm 
 advisor and of the farm bureau will be undertaken together upon 
 projects to which they mutually agree. They will work together be- 
 cause in the ultimate judgment of the farmers they will find that the 
 solution of most vexing problems is to be accomplished by means of 
 the use of agricultural fact applied in an educational way to the local 
 situation. 
 
 What, then, are to be the constructive problems undertaken in the 
 immediate future ? I will venture to hazard a guess at a few of them. 
 I believe the first development immediately needed is to make the farm 
 bureau the agency for rural progress for the whole family. In the 
 beginning farm bureaus were predicated on the basis of work with 
 men, and we have only now begun to see that it is not only with the 
 men but also with the women and children that the farm bureaus 
 should work, since they, too, have problems that need solving, and they, 
 too, should become a part of the rural organization which aims to solve 
 those problems. We are just now testing out in nine counties the value 
 of the Farm Home Department of the Farm Bureau, in which latter 
 women join exactly on the same basis as the men, but find for their 
 service a specially organized department which concerns itself with 
 the problem of the home. We have begun to realize in some small 
 degree that these problems are even more vital because more intimate 
 with the actual success of the family placed on the land. Home Dem- 
 onstration Agents, who are women specifically trained to bring light 
 to bear on these problems, are placed in the counties in exactly the 
 same relation to this work as are farm advisors. 
 
 The work with boys and girls is a look ahead into the immediate 
 future. The school has not entirely filled its place as an educational 
 agency because the children only spend five hours a day for five days 
 a week in school, but the farm bureau can step in where the school 
 
Circular 209 TH e FUNCTION OF THE FARM BUREAU 13 
 
 leaves off and can so organize the boys and girls that they may grow 
 up with the vision of a better country life and the knowledge of the 
 benefits that good farming and good home making may mean for them. 
 If country life is to prosper and progress we must keep a fair share 
 of the good strong American children in the rural life to which they 
 were brought up. I believe this is essential not only for the perpetu- 
 ation of American families on farms but for the real happiness and 
 prosperity of these children themselves, since I believe that under 
 proper conditions there is no better place to spend a life than on a 
 good American farm. Our present development is wholly along the 
 line of agricultural clubs for boys and girls. I think I foresee the 
 development of this idea until it will integrate in the various phases 
 of child life. 
 
 It may be, too, that farm bureaus will desire to organize still 
 another agency as an adjunct ; that is, they have already to some 
 degree the agricultural clubs of boys from ten to eighteen who are 
 growing crops on farms on a competitive basis under the general direc- 
 tion of the farm bureau. They also have the main division of the farm 
 bureau which concerns itself with mature men and women, say, from 
 the age of twenty-five to sixty years. It may become desirable to 
 organize a Junior Farm Bureau for the special service of those young 
 men between eighteen and twenty-five, taking them as they leave the 
 agricultural clubs and carryinrg them forward in to a special division 
 of the farm bureau until they have reached maturity and are on their 
 own farms when they go into the main farm bureau itself. I have 
 dreamed of this Junior Farm Bureau as the link that would connect 
 the boys of today with the men of tomorrow, and had gone so far as to 
 detail one of our men to an investigation looking towards the formation 
 of a Junior Farm Bureau in one county. At the outbreak of the war 
 the furtherance of that branch of our work had, of course, to be dis- 
 continued, since the army took precisely the group of young men whom 
 we were plannig to organize into this agency. With the demobilization 
 of the armies we may turn back our thoughts to this plan, and may soon 
 hope again to bring this up before you as a possible development. 
 
 I believe that the farm bureau should be the far-sighted agency 
 to plan for a permanent agriculture. Up to this time we have been 
 occupied upon plans for the immediate future. "We need to provide 
 a means of making farming in California a permanently successful 
 enterprise. I need not dwell upon the problems connected therewith, 
 which are many and diverse, but will merely mention one of these, 
 which is — and I almost say it with bated breath — the increase of alkali 
 wherever proper drainage is not provided. A quarter of a century 
 ago it was predicted by Dr. Hilgard that we must provide against this 
 danger in California, and the matter was duly written up and pub- 
 
14 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA — EXPERIMENT STATION" 
 
 lished, but no organization existed at that time, nor has ever existed, 
 which was sufficiently far-sighted to take up this problem and provide, 
 while time" yet remained, for the ultimate consideration and disposal 
 of this very imminent danger to our state. Perhaps the greatest 
 problem facing rural California is the drainage of the interior valleys 
 now coming under irrigation. The farm bureaus can furnish an 
 agency which will look far ahead and which will promote the bettering 
 of country life upon a more permanent basis than the needs of today 
 and next year. 
 
 Again, I believe, that the farm bureaus may well take as one of 
 their chief purposes the proposal to make rural civilization as efficient 
 and satisfying as city civilization by the creation within their boun- 
 daries of those necessary appurtenances to successful country life that 
 come through governmental agencies. By that I mean such things as 
 good roads, good schools, equable taxation, and the repression of crime 
 and immorality. I believe that those farm bureaus in California which 
 have encouraged the building of permanent roads have done more 
 perhaps than even they have realized. They have brought into being 
 a community asset which will live after those who have promoted it 
 are long gone away. 
 
 Persons will arise who will tell us that the farm bureau most of all 
 needs to start a department store where hats, shoes, and cookstoves 
 will be sold. They will say this because they believe some local shop- 
 keeper is deriving an unjust profit. Others will tell us that the farm 
 bureau should elect some man governor, and thereby cause to be rectified 
 all injustices of government and all defects of politics. Still others 
 will cry that the farm bureaus attack the labor problem in such a way 
 as to create immediately a sort of rural industrial slavery whereby 
 yellow or brown men will work for scanty wages to raise up a landed 
 class of aristocrats. But I do not believe that the farm bureau is in 
 any danger of selling its position for such a mess of pottage. Such 
 voices will be in the small minority, and the conservative, sober judg- 
 ment of the farmers will continue to point out the wise course. 
 
 And, finally, I believe that the farm bureau must clearly compre- 
 hend that in order to be an agent of progress it must be a vehicle of 
 work. It must have a definite programme and projects. It must lay 
 out a line of attack for the problems to be solved, and it will proceed 
 precisely as fast as its members are willing to put their time and at- 
 tention into the solving of those problems. No association is worth 
 its salt unless it does something. The passing of resolutions is seldom 
 effective as a means of progress. Many organizations have been 
 wrecked on that rock. They have gradually worked themselves up 
 into a state of mind whereby they somehow felt that through the 
 passing of resolutions they caused the world to advance. They would 
 
Circular 209 the function of the Farm Bureau 15 
 
 spend a day appointing committees and wrangling over the wording 
 of flowing sentences, and then go home with the glowing sense that they 
 had accomplished something ; but the sun would set upon a world that 
 was no different than that upon which it had risen. 
 
 A farm bureau to be effective must get the active cooperative in- 
 terest and work of its entire membership. No single board of directors 
 can carry a farm bureau forward to success. The more persons in- 
 volved in the solving of the problem the more certain it is that it will 
 be solved correctly and the quicker it will reach that solution. I be- 
 lieve that the work of the farm bureau should be built up not only on 
 a county programme of work but on a community and even an indi- 
 vidual programme of work where members from the farm bureau 
 should have laid out at the beginning of the year not only what part 
 their county is going to take in the programme for agricultural 
 progress, not only what work the farm bureau center is going to do 
 and what projects it is going to further, but what they, themselves, are 
 going to do to aid in this programme — what part they are going to 
 take in the enterprise. Built upon such a basis, the farm bureau will 
 become the most potent factor in rural life. Already we are begin- 
 ning to see the progress that has been made. The public is confused 
 and perplexed by the multiplicity of agencies which exist, some of 
 which spend their time passing resolutions or writing up in the news- 
 papers what they intend to do. Glance for a moment at your news- 
 paper column and see the wide diversity there is in the published 
 material of that which is promised from that which is accomplished. 
 So many investigations are to be made, so many criminals are to be 
 caught, so many irrigation districts and roads and railways are to be 
 built — but how few announcements you see that they have been built — 
 that they have been brought into existence. Fortunately thus far the 
 farm bureau has advertised itself by accomplishment rather than prom- 
 ises. It tells more about what it has done than what it intends to do. 
 It has concerned itself with getting concrete results that were demon- 
 strational in terms of dollars and cents, and in homes and farms made 
 better. I hope our farm bureaus may never be confused in their per- 
 ception of the problem, which is not to delineate a policy for some other 
 institution to further, but to attack the problem themselves first hand 
 and to bring it to consummation. 
 
 Already our farm bureau centers are becoming a real community 
 meeting place and focal point for progressive ideas. The farm bureaus 
 have always maintained themselves as a public forum towards which 
 all persons may come to present their cases to the rural people. I hope 
 that the farm bureaus will always so remain and will not be afraid to 
 hear any one who has a straight story to tell. 
 
16 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA — EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 I look forward to the time when the farm bureau center shall be- 
 come a community center in the real sense. I see there a rural school 
 with an auditorium to seat the people of the country-side ; that in that 
 school guided, aided, and advised by the farm bureau, there will be boys 
 and girls who take a real interest in their work because they, too, are 
 a part of that farm bureau center; that the school will be manned by 
 an agricultural teacher employed twelve months in the year who sees 
 beyond the walls of the building and who looks out to the farm and 
 fields not only as a means of inspiration but as a laboratory for his 
 work. There will be a woman employed as a teacher of the subjects 
 that center about the home, who will gather to herself a group of girls 
 who will be taught how to make the homes of the community as efficient 
 as they can be developed ; that in that school there will be a branch of 
 the county free library under our California system which will give 
 any man the book he wants at the time he wants it, and there shall be 
 a community kitchen and dining-room where the people can get to- 
 gether for picnics and suppers. In the simple auditorium will be held 
 the farm bureau center meetings and other committee meetings from 
 night to night and from week to week. Back of that farm bureau 
 center, focused in the county-seat, there will be a farm advisor, a home 
 demonstration agent, and a county club leader acting as the agents 
 for those agricultural institutions which are gathering the facts for 
 the progress of country life, and from that country life will come the 
 wisest, most public spirited and ablest farmers as directors of the 
 county farm bureau who will sit together and plan out with the aid 
 and direction of the other farmers of the county the plans and projects 
 which will make for the betterment of the folk who live on farms. Such 
 agencies as this gathered together into a state organization for mutual 
 helpfulness and occasional meetings from all the states in a national 
 organization where experience and plans may be exchanged, will be to 
 America the greatest governor of the body politic. On this will be 
 builded for all time a sane and progressive country life which will give 
 to the cities of America that basis for confidence and cooperation which 
 they have a right to expect and which the farmers are willing to extend. 
 
 What, then, is the function of the farm bureau? To make better 
 farms and better homes in the open country. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 
 COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE BENJ ' ' DE WHEELER - p«-«"t 
 
 THOMAS FORSYTH HUNT, Dean and Director 
 BERKELEY H. E. VAN NORMAN. Vice-Director and Dean 
 
 University Farm School 
 
 CIRCULAR No. 209 
 March, 1919 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF THE FARM BUREAU 
 
 By B. H. CEOCHEEON 
 
 The time has come when the farm bureau should pause to consider 
 what is its real function in the life of the nation. At present the farm 
 bureau movement, the greatest organization of farmers that the world 
 has ever seen, is very certain that it is on its way, but somewhat, 
 undecided whither it is going. 
 
 Farm bureaus are a natural outgrowth of the desire of American 
 farmers to do two things. First to unite together for mutual self-help 
 and co-operation along any line that may be needed, and second, to 
 get into close and intimate touch with those institutions of public 
 enterprise and of the government which have accumulated the infor- 
 mation necessary to make farm life more prosperous. 
 
 Therefore we may well stop to consider the real purpose of the 
 farm bureau and what phase of farm bureau work should be most 
 emphasized in the future. In so doing I desire only to consider what 
 is best for the farmers of California. Primarily I am not interested 
 in the farm bureau unless it is the best type of organization for the 
 farmers of the state and unless, in turn, it will do its part towards 
 making American homes and lives better and set this nation upon a 
 still firmer foundation than it now possesses. I am interested in farm 
 bureaus only as an aid toward that end and if a more efficient organ- 
 ization can be devised to carry on this work the farm bureau should 
 give place to it. I am interested far less in the perpetuation of farm 
 advisors or of other agricultural extension work. I consider them 
 only in relation to the welfare of the people of this state and country. 
 They have no other function than to aid the development of rural life, 
 which in turn is the greatest stabilizer in our national existence. 
 
 The farm bureaus started in several states under various names 
 and under plans which were widely divergent. Even to-day the farm 
 bureaus of America vary so widely in their administration, organiza- 
 tion, projects, and development, as to be almost unrecognizable as 
 similar organizations occupied in similar work. This is chiefly because 
 the farm bureau was new and untried so that in the beginning no 
 
 An address delivered before the Annual Farm Bureaus Conference. Printed by request of 
 the Conference. 
 
one had the foresight or temerity to set down on paper a definite 
 method of work or a definite plan for the fulfillment of those objects 
 which were in the minds of all farmers. The experience of the last 
 few years has been so scanty that even now we hesitate to say that 
 any one plan is best among the several that have been advanced or that 
 any one specific sphere of work is alone the function of the farm 
 bureau. 
 
 California was somewhat fortunate among the states in that its 
 farm bureau movement developed later than in some others and had 
 something of a background upon which to plan out the type of organ- 
 ization and method of work. A definite constitution and by-laws were 
 laid down in the fall of 1914, which have been almost unanimously 
 followed by the thirty-seven counties organized during the past five 
 years. Thus, in California, we have a unity of organization which is 
 coincident in all the counties and which articulates right down to 
 the farm bureau center itself. The particular features of the Cali- 
 fornia type of organization which are most worthy of note are those 
 which stress and emphasize the rural community as the unit of organ- 
 ization. These communities, or farm bureau centers, are represented 
 upon the board of directors. Necessarily, therefore, that board itself 
 represents the entire county or those portions thereof that have 
 membership in the farm bureau. 
 
 Another type of farm bureau organization prevalent in some other 
 states, contemplates no community organizations or farm bureau 
 centers. In that type, the board of directors represents lines of work 
 or projects and are preferably chosen at or near the county-seat in 
 order that they may easily get together for conference. This, it seems 
 to us, tends to stress the county-seat or chief city of the county as 
 the emanating point for the work rather than the rural community 
 which is the natural gathering place of the people who live on farms. 
 Indeed, it was felt in California that there was some danger in having 
 the board of directors consist of men who largely came from that 
 central point and were interested in special projects since they might 
 not truly represent the whole farm population of the county. 
 
 At first in some states, the farm bureaus were not promoted by the 
 agricultural colleges. They were looked upon somewhat askance as a 
 dangerous and untried procedure which might wreck the move for 
 agricultural extension being promoted by the federal and state gov- 
 ernments by means of paid extension workers. Later this fear passed 
 away and the colleges of agriculture came to welcome the farm 
 bureau as they saw more fully its possibilities of development and 
 the progress which might be made in agricultural extension work 
 when it was furthered by a large body of farmers who worked in close 
 co-operation with it. However, in this state, the value of the farm 
 
bureau has been fully recognized from the beginning. Therefore the 
 administration of this college has required every county that desired 
 the services of a farm advisor to first form a county farm bureau in 
 which there were 20 per cent of the farmers in membership as an 
 attest of their desire for the work of the farm advisor amongst them. 
 The wisdom of this has been proven by experience in that no county 
 of California has ever permanently abandoned the work which has 
 gone steadily forward from that time until now when 85 per cent of 
 the farmers of the state are represented in counties which have farm 
 bureaus. It is evident that the small residue of 15 per cent could 
 easily be encouraged to consummate their organization if there were 
 any hope of funds to give them a farm advisor for their service. 
 
 In organizing the farm bureau the problem necessarily became 
 at once : what was this new farm bureau to do ; what was to be its 
 sphere of work; how far was it to go in the various movements re- 
 quested by farmers; and finally, what was to be the relation between 
 that farm bureau and the government and the state agent placed in 
 the county to work on the extension of agriculture ? These problems 
 in part are still before us. Let us then look back to see what was 
 the original conception of the California farm bureau both as to its 
 plan of organization and its sphere of work. 
 
 In planning the California type of farm bureau the constitution 
 was very carefully written so that no federal or state official might 
 have any direction over it. The organization was definitely and pur- 
 posely placed wholly in the hands of farmers elected from among their 
 fellow membership representing agricultural communities of the 
 county who would have in their hands the whole direction and deter- 
 mination of the policies of the farm bureau. The belief upon which 
 this was based was that the farmers of California were wholly com- 
 petent to guide their own affairs and that provided this board of 
 directors adequately represented the wishes of the members of their 
 county, there would be no doubt either of the definiteness of their 
 plans or of the propriety of their course since I believed essentially in 
 the collective wisdom of the farmers of the state. In order that these 
 farm bureau directors might really represent the wishes of their 
 constituents and might have frequent opportunity to gather together 
 their desires and proposals, it was planned that every farm bureau 
 center should hold a meeting once a month at which they might 
 receive from their director the report of the last directors' meeting 
 held at the county seat, and might signify to him their wishes and 
 plans for the future. In order that the farm advisor working with 
 the farm bureau might have the benefit of the opinions and knowledge 
 expressed and that he, in turn, would have an opportunity for getting 
 his advice to the farm bureau centers, it was planned that in general 
 
he should be present at their meeting. The danger in this was recog- 
 nized in that the farmers might come to feel that because the farm 
 advisor was there that it was the farm advisor's meeting and not the 
 farm bureau meeting. It was believed, however, that by proper direc- 
 tion and supervision from the central office the farm advisor could 
 be held in his proper capacity as related to the farm bureau and 
 could be brought to understand and clearly bear in mind that he had 
 no other function so far as the policies of the farm bureau were 
 concerned than to give advice and consultation when it was asked. 
 
 Persons who were conversant with farmers' meetings told us that 
 it would not be possible to continue to gather indefinitely the people 
 of any given community at a meeting once a month because they 
 would soon be tired of such a gathering and would gradually 
 stop attending. There was no experience upon which to base this 
 conclusion except that various itinerant agencies such as farmers' 
 institutes, had found their attendance decreasing during the past 
 generation. My belief was that if a definite and permanent organiza- 
 tion could be formed which would have a programme of work based 
 upon concrete and feasible projects for the development of the com- 
 munity, the county, the state, and the nation that the people would 
 continue to come because of the efficiency of the organization and 
 because of their interest and part in the work it was doing. This 
 belief has been amply borne out by the experience of the past five 
 years wherein the average attendance at farm bureau centers in the 
 state has steadily but slowly gained and while it was satisfactory in 
 the beginning, it is still more so at this date when the average attend- 
 ance at farm bureau centers in California is forty-one persons. Not 
 only have these farm bureau centers continued to increase in atten- 
 tion and interest, but they have been permanent in their location, the 
 percentage of those that have passed away being so small as to be 
 almost negligible while the number of them has now grown until 
 there are 429 such community centers in California. 
 
 In all this time, however, the activity has largely been one of 
 organization and development. The most interesting feature of this 
 organization was that we did not at first form a state-wide farm bureau 
 or a state board of direction wherefrom it was brought down to the 
 counties and later to the communities and ultimately to the people, 
 but that one by one these farm bureau centers were formed in Califor- 
 nia by the people themselves wherever there was a group of persons 
 who felt it desirable to get together for their mutual development 
 and improvement. The organization has grown from the ground 
 up and consequently is solidly set thereon. I do not believe that any 
 other factor than an absolutely unwise and malicious direction could 
 now wreck the farm bureau movement in California. 
 
The very nature of the farm bureau under the California plan has 
 made for a wide autonomy of the farm bureau centers whereby they 
 have developed their own programme and projects of work. While 
 the method under which the farm bureau centers are organized, main- 
 tained and directed is the same throughout the state, yet because the 
 problems of the communities differ, the projects they have stressed are 
 widely divergent. This was all expressly provided and desired. The 
 system of organization has worked out as planned with astonishing 
 success. 
 
 But how about the purpose — the function of the organization? 
 Was there a definite conception of what the farm bureau should do? 
 May I read you what was proposed as the function of the California 
 farm bureau at the time of its inception to see whether we have in 
 any way strayed from this original plan of action, and if so, whether 
 this divergence is wise or unwise : 
 
 A farm bureau is an organization of farmers and ranchers who combine to 
 promote agriculture through co-operative study of farm conditions. 
 
 Many types of farmers ' organizations have long been existent. There have 
 been farmers' clubs, granges, institutes, unions, alliances, and others. Some of 
 these have been more or less successful, but many have passed away. Their failure 
 has usually been due to one or more of the following causes: (1) lack of a distinct 
 purpose to fill a definite need; (2) lack of membership to sufficiently represent all 
 classes of farmers and types of farming; (3) lack of co-operation with other 
 similar farm organizations; (4) lack of continuous and unselfish leadership. 
 
 The farm bureau is distinct from all of these. It is not primarily a social 
 organization; neither is it essentially to unite farmers so as to lower prices of 
 stuffs bought and to raise prices of products sold. It is formed to bring together 
 for mutual eo-operation those farmers who want to investigate the fundamental 
 problems that are involved in production on their farms. 
 
 Every state and territory has at least one ' ' experiment farm ' ' supported by 
 federal and state funds. These have been exceedingly valuable because the results 
 therefrom were noted by men whose business and interest it was to observe. The 
 acreages of these farms were small; their crops were often meager — and yet they 
 have been worth millions beyond their cost because the records of productions and 
 the conditions under which they were grown were known and noted. 
 
 Many of our farm problems are already solved on the farms of the nation. 
 Individuals have found the solution of vexing questions that are agitating the 
 experiment stations and agricultural colleges. But these solutions usually fall 
 out of sight unnoted or are known only to the man on whose farm they occur. 
 If these unknown and unnoted experiments could be gathered they would at once 
 add much to our view of agriculture. 
 
 In America there are on the average more than 100 000 farms to each " experi- 
 ment farm." Obviously, if the results on some small percentage of these could 
 be viewed from the same standpoint as at the experiment farm, the benefits would 
 enormously outnumber the records achieved by the experiment stations. It is, of 
 course, impossible to gather all this material or to note all the changing conditions 
 on farms. But it may be possible to gather together into one county organization 
 the wide-awake and interested farmers who will compare their results with those 
 
of others and, in a more or less scientific way, plan out experiments and demon- 
 strations on their own farms. Such is a farm bureau. 
 
 Fundamentally, then, a farm bureau for the county can be collectively a sort 
 of giant experiment station with several hundred observers who hold a monthly 
 caucus to compare results. 
 
 The farm bureau has a trained man to aid it: the farm advisor (see Circular 
 133). It is his business to help interpret results, to point out new lines of work, 
 and to deduce conclusions from the evidence at hand. The farm bureau can be 
 of greater value to the county than the farm advisor. Together, they can be of 
 more benefit than either alone. 
 
 Other activities may concern the farm bureau besides local research into 
 agricultural problems. 
 
 The farm bureau may be a sort of rural chamber of commerce and thus be 
 the guardian of rural affairs. It can take the lead in agtitation for good roads, 
 for better schools, and for cheaper methods of buying and selling. Various sub- 
 sidiary organizations of the farm bureau, known as farm bureau departments, 
 may be formed, thus linking together persons of similar or identical interests. 
 Perhaps, most of all, the farm bureau can help promote the social institutions of 
 country life. Some rural neighbors are so starved for recreational meetings that 
 they will come out to anything from a patent-medicine show to a school meeting. 
 The farm bureau can help put more recreation into rural life. Every country 
 neighborhood ought to have some social gathering at least once a week. It is 
 almost as much needed as the spiritual congregations at the church, or the educa- 
 tional assemblages of the children at the school-house. 
 
 But very surely and insistently, the farm bureau is not first and foremost of 
 these purposes — good and desirable as they may be. Perhaps, the farm bureau 
 can help to buy cheaper and better seeds, can help to boost the local socials, can 
 encourage the faltering school teacher, can get out and talk for good roads — but 
 its first and surest function is to increase the local knowledge of agricultural 
 fact. 
 
 This was written in 1915 as a part of the University circular on 
 the "County Farm Bureau.' As I look over the list of farm bureau 
 activities I regard it as remarkable that we have so clearly followed 
 the lines indicated in the statement there laid down and from my 
 rather intimate knowledge of the work of the California farm bureaus, 
 I stand here to-day to say to you that the farm bureaus of California 
 up to this time and this point have stood solidly behind that platform 
 expressed in those few paragraphs. In other words, the California 
 farm bureaus have been largely an educational agency in the broadest 
 sense of the term. Their greatest contribution to the welfare of the 
 people has been their dissemination in an organized way of better 
 methods of farm life as they have seen it. Occasionally, when they 
 have seen the need of it, they have gone from this to take up the better 
 handling of economic problems as business concerns, or as the pro- 
 moters of business concerns. Personally, I have believed — and believe 
 to-day — that it is a proper function of the farm bureau to set up 
 business relations when they can do so in a better way — and by that. 
 I mean, better in the broad sense for all those concerned — better than 
 
existent agencies which are already doing the work. I do not believe 
 that the farm bureau should be an agency which attempts to squeeze 
 out the other members of the rural community or which should set 
 up a sort of agricultural trust to manage and operate all rural affairs. 
 I am glad to say that the farm bureaus in California have never per- 
 mitted this and that their actions in the past five years have shown 
 such remarkable judgment as to wholly justify the original preface 
 that the collective wisdom of the farmers of California enabled them 
 to guide competently their own affairs. 
 
 I have conceded that the chief function of the farm bureau is that 
 of an educational agency and I have testified that the farm bureaus 
 in California have been chiefly an educational factor in the past. I 
 believe that this should be because most of our problems are first 
 educational in nature, although they may later proceed from that to 
 the practice of what that education teaches. I may be permitted to 
 quote one or two instances of this. 
 
 Three years ago the hog market situation in California was unsatis- 
 factory to both the farmers who produced the hogs and the packers 
 who bought the hogs and an unintelligent survey of the surface indica- 
 tions might have led some to suppose that what was immediately 
 needed was to set up some sort of a machine whereby the packing 
 companies would immediately become displaced by some sort of a 
 farmers' organization which would undertake to take the hogs off the 
 farm and deliver them in cured form to the people. Such a scheme 
 would have required an enormous amount of money and might have 
 been doubtful of success, depending not only on the type of organiza- 
 tion and a high class management with expert knowledge of packing 
 and selling practices, but also upon the antagonism and strife in the 
 trade which would have ensued. Instead of that an educational idea 
 was brought from Australia by one of the farm advisors based on 
 the principle that the trouble with the hog market in California was 
 caused by three things : first, the farmers grew poor hogs ; second, they 
 sold them in ungraded and undesirable sized lots, and third, there was 
 no free competition in their purchase. The result of this was the 
 inauguration of a demonstration of the auction sales system as a 
 method of marketing hogs. This auction sale brought the hogs 
 together from the farmers to a central point. A committee of farmers 
 graded them and placed them in carload lots. Buyers came to that 
 place and in the presence of the farmers bought the hogs in an open 
 market for the highest bid. The result was that the packers got the 
 kind of hogs they wanted, in the right sized lots, at the highest prices 
 they could afford to pay. The farmers got the best prices obtainable 
 in the open market for the best hogs and the man who grew good hogs 
 received a premium over him who raised poor hogs. The plan sue- 
 
8 
 
 ceeded well because it served a real need in the community and 
 because it showed both the farmers and the packers the real status 
 of the hog market. It has swept like wildfire over many of the 
 counties of California and although still in its youth a quarter of a 
 million dollars' worth of hogs are sold each month under this system 
 which, on the average, give at least 1 cent per pound more to the 
 farmers for their hogs than ever was obtained before. The packers 
 say that the hogs are better in quality than were ever known in the 
 state and the farmers say that they get nearer the prices they think 
 they deserve than they have ever experienced. It is assumed that 
 even the small number of auction sales held in the state last year saved 
 a quarter of a million dollars which went directly into the pockets of 
 the farmers of the state. This was accomplished without setting up 
 any elaborate machinery and without causing the farmers to go deep 
 in their pockets to support an expensive plant which might never pay. 
 It was made possible because educational thought had been brought 
 to bear upon the problem and the farmers, in turn, were advised of 
 every change in the situation and of the best methods for getting the 
 results that they desired. 
 
 I need only mention one more result which is so large and far- 
 reaching as to quite beggar description, namely that of the war 
 emergency campaigns conducted by the farm bureaus at the instance 
 of the University of California and the United States Department of 
 Agriculture. These campaigns sought to advise farmers what crops 
 were needed for the successful prosecution of the war which, of course, 
 meant the crops that would be in demand and which thereafter might 
 be expected to bring a fair price. Sometimes when these campaigns 
 were launched, it was difficult for farmers to see wherein they would 
 derive a profit but because they were based upon a real knowledge of 
 the conditions of the world's markets and because furthermore they 
 took into consideration the promotion of the permanent agriculture 
 of the state, each one was founded upon a real knowledge of condi- 
 tions. An educatinal institution, the farm bureau, became the agency 
 through which each campaign was furthered in the county. Farmers 
 planted wheat although the price was low but when that wheat came 
 to be harvested, the price was higher than that of barley and those 
 that had wheat and had followed the advice of the farm bureau, found 
 no difficulty in their marketing problems. Farmers grew hogs in 
 response to the hog campaign and while it did not then look possible 
 to raise hogs at a profit, by the time the hogs were fed and grown 
 the price of feed had been so reduced and the price of hogs so advanced 
 that the farmers throughout the state found that they had grown 
 them at a profit. In turn, the sheep campaign was furthered because 
 of the prospective need of the government for wool. Where sheep 
 
9 
 
 were economically maintained on farms they resulted not only in an 
 immediate profit to the farmers but in a permanent addition to Cali- 
 fornia agriculture. Diversification of crops which was furthered by 
 these war emergency campaigns upon a sound economic basis has 
 lessened unrest, has made for the local advancement of farm man- 
 agement in its right sense, and has bettered the condition of California 
 farming more than any one thing in the last ten years. Farmers who 
 were not in touch with these campaigns, in their desire to help the 
 food situation of the government, often unwisely grew crops which 
 were not later in demand and which consequently they could not 
 market. Some of these still remain .on their hands, although it is 
 hoped that the difficulty may be overcome within the next few months. 
 I wish only to point out that the farm bureaus in California have 
 chiefly used educational means to overcome their difficulties and in 
 the main have been successful. 
 
 Nevertheless, after all is said and done there does remain a residue 
 of problems, complications, and injustices which can only be solved 
 by farmers' organizations going ahead to better their conditions in 
 any legitimate way that seems to them feasible. I am perfectly in 
 accord with any well organized and considered movement of the 
 farmers to better the conditions of the state, and therefore of the 
 nation, through any means which may seem most feasible and desir- 
 able to the united judgment of the farmers of the state as expressed 
 through the farm bureaus. I believe that the membership and direc- 
 tion of the farm bureau is so representative and I believe that the 
 collective judgment of those who live on the land is so correct that if 
 the farm bureaus are given a full opportunity to consider rural prob- 
 lems and to understand them in their various phases they cannot go 
 far wrong. Therefore, I have entire confidence in the future of this 
 organization and the direction it will take provided it is kept as at 
 present, so that the far-spread membership of 20,000 may express 
 themselves directly through their representatives on the policies of 
 the organization. If there is to be a state farm bureau it should be 
 as democratic and representative in its organization as are those of 
 the counties. Its affairs should not be handed over to a small execu- 
 tive committee, but should be managed by a representative from every 
 county. So long as the farm bureau functions as a democratic insti- 
 tution which represents all parts and parcels of the rural body politic 
 there need be no fear for the future. 
 
 In all this I have mentioned but seldom the county farm advisor 
 who has been the ever-present agent to aid this farm bureau in its 
 work.' He is the representative of the federal and state institutions 
 of agriculture in extending their work in the counties of the state 
 and nation. Already three thousand of these men are at work in as 
 
10 
 
 many counties of the nation and more will follow. It is important 
 that their position should be understood and that their relation to 
 the farm bureau should be clear, in order that we should not be 
 confused in our minds as to the function of the farm bureau in dis- 
 tinction from that of the farm advisor. These two have worked to- 
 gether so harmoniously that persons are likely to confuse them. I 
 believe, however, that the future of this work, so far as the farm 
 bureaus are concerned, is dependent upon the drawing of a clear 
 distinction between the work of the farm bureau which is the farmers' 
 agency and that of the farm advisor who is the agent of the state and 
 national governmental agencies. 
 
 The farm advisor is placed in the county for a specific purpose, 
 which is to extend the knowledge which the agricultural colleges and 
 experiment stations have gained through the intensive research work 
 of the investigators who are behind them. He is the field agent of 
 the agricultural forces of the nation. As such he does not represent 
 the farm bureau nor is he directed by the farm bureau, but rather 
 he is maintained as closely as possible in direct relation with the 
 federal and state governments. This is of the utmost importance. 
 
 The value of the farm advisor to the people of the county is in 
 having the unbiased judgment of an official who does not represent a 
 local situation or a local constituency, whose appointment and whose 
 term of office is not dependent upon the favor of local politicians or 
 even of certain influential farmers, but who represents the organized 
 agricultural forces of the government and the knowledge that they 
 have concerning the betterment of rural life. His value to the people 
 is in precise proportion to the extent to which he knows and tells the 
 truth. His only function in that county is to disseminate the subject 
 matter which has been slowly and painstakingly gathered by the agri- 
 cultural institutions, which, like great factories, are slowly but surely 
 grinding out the product of the knowledge of life. He may advise 
 the farm bureau upon its request as to the procedure which it may 
 best follow. He may co-operate with it and doubtless will co-operate 
 with it on most of the projects that it has under study, but in so 
 doing he must be clearly defined as a governmental official who is 
 working for the benefit of the whole people. There can be only three 
 possible relationships between the farm bureau and the farm 
 advisor. 
 
 The first would be to put the farm bureau under the direction of 
 the farm advisor and to have the farm bureau the official agency 
 which carried out the projects and purposes of the farm advisor, and 
 therefore of those officials and agencies which directed the farm ad- 
 visor. Such a plan would imply that the farm bureau should not 
 undertake any projects unless approved by the government. As such 
 
11 
 
 it is clearly inadvisable unless the farmers desire to exercise no initi- 
 ative or judgment of their own. 
 
 The second possible relationship is that the farm bureau should 
 direct the farm advisor, and that he should be a sort of secretary or 
 manager for that farm bureau whereby he carried out the proposals 
 and plans of the organization. Such a relationship would soon result 
 in the farm advisor losing his entire significance and would in time 
 prevent his support from public funds. 
 
 The third relationship is that which we have conceived and prac- 
 ticed in this state, wherein the farm bureau and farm advisor are 
 separate and distinct instruments for the furtherance of agriculture. 
 The farm advisor is directed by the federal and state governments 
 and the farm bureau is directed by the farmers through their repre- 
 sentatives who are directors of the farm bureau. When the farm 
 bureau desires to carry on a project which is part, or wholly, in the 
 nature of agricultural extension, then that part may properly come 
 within the scope of the farm advisor. Then they mutually draw up 
 a project or written plan setting forth the piece of work they are to 
 do, the means by which they are to do it, and the results they hope 
 to accomplish, and clearly distinguish which part in it is to be done 
 by the farm advisor and which part by the farm bureau. This brings 
 them into active co-operation on that particular project, but does not 
 necessarily mean that the farm bureau will always work with the 
 farm advisor, nor that the farm advisor is compelled thereby to join 
 in every movement that the farm bureau desires to further. It does 
 not hamper the farm bureau in its work and does not restrict it to 
 those purely extension activities which are perhaps its chief function 
 but from which it may from time to time depart in the interests of 
 the farmers of the county. I believe it would be most unwise to 
 attempt to put the farm bureaus of this, or any other state, under 
 the direction of the United States Department of Agriculture, or of 
 the State College of Agriculture. I think it would deprive them of 
 their primary reason for existence, which is to represent the free and 
 untrammeled action of the farmers of the country. Likewise, I believe 
 it would be most unfortunate for the farm advisors to be placed under 
 the direction of the farm bureaus, since it would deprive the farm 
 advisors of their real mission, which is to represent the state and 
 federal agencies of agriculture. Placed under the direction of the 
 farm bureau, the farm advisor becomes no more than a farm bureau 
 secretary or manager and can have no more than local usefulness and 
 a local boundary to his horizon. 
 
 I have regretted to observe that some states have not always been 
 clear in their vision of either the farm bureau or the farm advisor. 
 They have confused the two in the minds of the people and have some- 
 
.12 
 
 times handed over the direction of the farm advisor to the farm 
 bureaus, and then found those farm bureaus departing from a strict 
 line of educational work as was perhaps necessary in the county. 
 This brought the farm advisor and the farm bureau into embarrassing 
 relations, and, in turn, the United States Department of Agriculture 
 and the college of agriculture found their agents embarking upon 
 projects which were neither federal nor state functions and which 
 could not properly be undertaken by their agents under the guise of 
 public necessities. 
 
 I conceive that there might possibly be three types of work going 
 on in a county at once : first, that work which the farm advisor is 
 carrying on alone because it is a matter in which only the federal and 
 state governments are interested and which directed him to do it ; 
 second, that work which the farm bureau is carrying on alone because 
 it is a matter in which neither the federal or state governments desire 
 to enter but which the farmers of the county desire to promote them- 
 selves ; and, third, that type of activity upon which the farm bureau 
 and the farm advisor work jointly in co-operation. I anticipate that 
 in the future, as in the past, 90 per cent of the activity of the farm 
 advisor and of the farm bureau will be undertaken together upon 
 projects to which they mutually agree. They will work together be- 
 cause in the ultimate judgment of the farmers they will find that the 
 solution of most vexing problems is to be accomplished by means of 
 the use of agricultural fact applied in an educational way to the local 
 situation. 
 
 What, then, are to be the constructive problems undertaken in 
 the immediate future ? I will venture to hazard a guess at a few of 
 them. I believe the first development immediately needed is to make 
 the farm bureau the agency for rural progress for the whole family. 
 In the beginning farm bureaus were predicated on the basis of work 
 with men, and we have only now begun to see that it is not only with 
 the men but also with the women and children that the farm bureaus 
 should work, since they, too, have problems that need solving, and 
 they, too, should become a part of the rural organization which aims 
 to solve those problems. We are just now testing out in nine counties 
 the value of the Farm Home Department of the Farm Bureau, in 
 which latter women join exactly on the same basis as the men, but 
 find for their service a specially organized department which concerns 
 itself with the problem of the home. We have begun to realize in 
 some small degree that these problems are even more vital because 
 more intimate with the actual success of the family placed on the 
 land. Home Demonstration Agents, who are women specifically trained 
 to bring light to bear on these problems, are placed in the counties 
 in exactly the same relation to this work as are farm advisors. 
 
13, 
 
 The work with boys and girls is a look ahead into the immediate 
 future. The school has not entirely filled its place as an educational 
 agency because the children only spend five hours a day for five days 
 a week in school, but the farm bureau can step in where the school 
 leaves off and can so organize the boys and girls that they may grow 
 up with the vision of a better country life and the knowledge of the 
 benefits that good farming and good home-making may mean for them. 
 If country life is to prosper and progress we must keep a fair share 
 of the good strong American children in the rural life to which they 
 w r ere brought up. I believe this is essential not only for the perpetu- 
 ation of American families on farms but for the real happiness and 
 prosperity of these children themselves, since I believe that under 
 proper conditions there is no better place to spend a life than on a 
 good American farm. Our present development is wholly along the 
 line of agricultural clubs for boys and girls. I think I foresee the 
 development of this idea until it will integrate in the various phases 
 of child life. 
 
 It may be, too, that farm bureaus will desire to organize still 
 another agency as an adjunct ; that is, they have already to some 
 degree the agricultural clubs of boys from ten to eighteen who are 
 growing crops on farms on a competitive basis under the general direc- 
 tion of the farm bureau. They also have the main division of the farm 
 bureau which concerns itself with mature men and women, say, from 
 the age of twenty-five to sixty years. It may become desirable to 
 organize a Junior Farm Bureau for the special service of those young 
 men between eighteen and twenty-five, taking them as they leave the 
 agricultural clubs and carrying them forward in to a special division 
 of the farm bureau until they have reached maturity and are on their 
 own farms when they go into the main farm bureau itself. I have 
 dreamed of this Junior Farm Bureau as the link that would connect 
 the boys of today with the men of tomorrow, and had gone so far as 
 to detail one of our men to an investigation looking towards the 
 formation of a Junior Farm Bureau in one county. At the outbreak 
 of the war the furtherance of that branch of our work had, of course, 
 to be discontinued, since the army took precisely the group of young 
 men whom we were planning to organize into this agency. "With the 
 demobilization of the armies we may turn back our thoughts to this 
 plan, and may soon hope again to bring this up before you as a 
 possible development. 
 
 I believe that the farm bureau should be the far-sighted agency 
 to plan for a permanent agriculture. Up to this time we have been 
 occupied upon plans for the immediate future. We need to provide 
 a means of making farming in Calif rnia a permanently successful 
 enterprise. I need not dwell upon the problems connected therewith, 
 
'14 
 
 which are many and diverse, but will merely mention one of these, 
 which is — and I almost say it with bated breath — the increase of 
 alkali wherever proper drainage is not provided. A quarter of a 
 century ago it was predicted by Dr. Hilgard that we must provide 
 against this danger in California, and the matter was duly written up 
 and published, but no organization existed at that time, nor has ever 
 existed, which was sufficiently far-sighted to take up this problem and 
 provide, while time yet remained, for the ultimate consideration and 
 disposal of this very imminent danger to our state. Perhaps the 
 greatest problem facing rural California is the drainage of the interior 
 valleys now coming under irrigation. The farm bureaus can furnish 
 an agency which will look far ahead and which will promote the 
 bettering of country life upon a more permanent basis than the needs 
 of today and next year. 
 
 Again, I believe, that the farm bureaus may well take as one of 
 their chief purposes the proposal to make rural civilization as efficient 
 and satisfying as city civilization by the creation within their boun- 
 daries of those necessary appurtenances to successful country life that 
 come through governmental agencies. By that I mean such things as 
 good roads, good schools, equable taxation, and the repression of crime 
 and immorality. I believe that those farm bureaus in California 
 which have encouraged the building of permanent roads have done 
 more perhaps than even they have realized. They have brought into 
 being a community asset which will live after those who have pro- 
 moted it are long gone away. 
 
 Persons will arise who will tell us that the farm bureau most of 
 all needs to start a department store where hats, shoes, and cookstoves 
 will be sold. They will say this because they believe some local shop- 
 keeper is deriving an unjust profit. Others will tell us that the farm 
 bureau should elect some man governor and thereby cause to be recti- 
 fied all injustices of government and all defects of politics. Still 
 others will cry that the farm bureaus attack the labor problem in 
 such a way as to create immediately a sort of rural industrial slavery 
 whereby yellow or brown men will work for scanty wages to raise up 
 a landed class of aristocrats. But I do not believe that the farm 
 bureau is in any danger of selling its position for such a mess of 
 pottage. Such voices will be in the small minority, and the conserv- 
 ative, sober judgment of the farmers will continue to point out the 
 wise course. 
 
 And, finally, I believe that the farm bureau must clearly compre- 
 hend that in order to be an agent of progress it must be a vehicle of 
 work. It must have a definite programme and projects. It must lay 
 out a line of attack for the problems to be solved, and it will proceed 
 precisely as fast as its members are willing to put their time and 
 
15 
 
 attention into the solving of those problems. No association is worth 
 its salt unless it does something. The passing of resolutions is seldom 
 effective as a means of progress. Many organizations have been 
 wrecked on that rock. They have gradually worked themselves up 
 into a state of mind whereby they somehow felt that through the 
 passing of resolutions they caused the world to advance. They would 
 spend a day appointing committees and wrangling over the wording 
 of flowing sentences, and then go home with the glowing sense that 
 they had accomplished something ; but the sun would set upon a world 
 that was no different than that upon which it had risen. 
 
 A farm bureau to be effective must get the active co-operative 
 interest and work of its entire membership. No single board of 
 directors can carry a farm bureau forward to success. The more 
 persons involved in the solving of the problem, the more certain it is 
 that it will be solved correctly and the quicker it will reach that 
 solution. I believe that the work of the farm bureau should be built 
 up not only on a county programme of work but on a community and 
 even an individual programme of work where members from the farm 
 bureau should have laid out at the beginning of the year not only 
 what part their county is going to take in the programme for agricul- 
 tural progress, not only what work the farm bureau center is going 
 to do and what projects it is going to further, but what they, them- 
 selves, are going to do to aid in this programme — what part they are 
 going to take in the enterprise. Built upon such a basis, the farm 
 bureau will become the most potent factor in rural life. Already 
 we are beginning to see the progress that has been made. The public 
 is confused and perplexed by the multiplicity of agencies which exist, 
 some of which spend their time passing resolutions or writing up in 
 the newspapers what they intend to do. Glance for a moment at your 
 newspaper column and see the wide diversity there is in the pub- 
 lished material of that which is promised from that which is accom- 
 plished. So many investigations are to be made, so many criminals 
 are to be caught, so many irrigation districts and roads and railways 
 are to be built — but how few announcements you see that they have 
 been built — that they have been brought into existence. Fortunately 
 thus far the farm bureau has advertised itself by accomplishment 
 rather than promises. It tells more about what it has done than what 
 it intends to do. It has concerned itself with getting concrete results 
 that were demonstrational in terms of dollars and cents, and in homes 
 and farms made better. I hope our farm bureaus may never be con- 
 fused in their perception of the problem, which is not to delineate a 
 policy for some other institution to further, but to attack the problem 
 themselves first-hand and to bring it to consummation. 
 
 Already our farm bureau centers are becoming a real community 
 
16 
 
 meeting place and focal point for progressive ideas. The farm bureaus 
 have always maintained themselves as a public forum towards which 
 all persons may come to present their cases to the rural people. I 
 hope that the farm bureaus will always so remain and will not be 
 afraid to hear any one who has a straight story to tell. 
 
 I look forward to the time when the farm bureau center shall 
 become a community center in the real sense. I see there a rural 
 school with an auditorium to seat the people of the country-side; 
 that in that school guided, aided, and advised by the farm bureau, 
 there will be boys and girls who take a real interest in their work 
 because they, too, are a part of that farm bureau center; that the 
 school will be manned by an agricultural teacher employed twelve 
 months in the year who sees beyond the walls of the building and 
 who looks out to the farm and fields not only as a means of inspiration 
 but as a laboratory for his work. There will be a woman employed 
 as a teacher of the subjects that center about the home, who will 
 gather to herself a group of girls who will be taught how to make the 
 homes of the community as efficient as they can be developed; that 
 in that school there will be a branch of the county free library under 
 our California system which will give any man the book he wants 
 at the time he wants it, and there shall be a community kitchen and 
 dining-room where the people can get together for picnics and suppers. 
 In the simple auditorium will be held the farm bureau center meetings 
 and other committee meetings from night to night and from week to 
 week. Back of that farm bureau center, focused in the county seat, 
 there will be a farm advisor, a home demonstration agent, and a 
 county club leader acting as the agents for those agricultural institu- 
 tions which are gathering the facts for the progress of country life 
 and from that country life will come the wisest, most public-spirited 
 and ablest farmers as directors of the county farm bureau who will 
 sit together and plan out with the aid and direction of the other 
 farmers of the county the plans and projects which will make for the 
 betterment of the folk who live on farms. Such agencies as this 
 gathered together into a state organization for mutual helpfulness and 
 occasional meetings from all the states in a national organization where 
 experience and plans may be exchanged will be to America the greatest 
 governor of the body politic. On this will be builded for all time a 
 sane and progressive country life which will give to the cities of 
 America that basis for confidence and co-operation which they have a 
 right to expect and which the farmers are willing to extend. 
 
 What, then, is the function of the farm bureau? To make better 
 farms and better homes in the open country.