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( BRIDGECACHE )

October 1917






AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION PROBLEMS IN FLORIDA



Introduction



GLUTLE;fiEN OF THE ATHENAEUM CLUB, AND VISITORS:


I am very happy to be able to present to you to-


night a paper on the Agricultural Extension Problems


in Florida. I assume that the agricultural extension


problems in Florida, in the larger sense, are the same


as in the other States of the Union. So far as we can


see, the fundamental cause and the fundamental effect are


the same. In this paper I :hall attempt to a-oid the


oratorical, since those papers, especially of mine, where


there.has been an attempt to introduce oratory, were crit-


icised as being demagogic. On the other hand, those


papers that were presented purely as matters of fact,


with considerable detail in the way of data, were branded








2




as dry and uninteresting. For the paper tonight,


therefore, I am going to go it as I please, making use


of a multiplicity of data when the subject happens to


need it, and using rhetorical expressions where that


happens to please me. As a matter of fact, I am


writing this paper largely to please myself, and the


members of the Athenaeum Club if I can.


In this paper I want to present some large and


fundamental problems that, so far as my knowledge goes,


have not been discussed before the Athenaeum Club. In


a measure the discussion will hinge on the war situation,


thou h this can in no wise be said to be a war essay.


ITothing has occurred in the United States since 1862


that has gripped so closely at the fundamental princi-


ples of our government and the fundamental relationships


of people with each other, as the war which was declared











in April, 1917. My thesis tonight does not have for

its primary object the presentation of the general

methods of carrying out the Extension work, but l want

rather to present the machinery by which this work is

carried out in order that I may bring clearly before

your minds the problems of a social nature that are

being worked out and then present to our view what the

effects of this work may be upon the social condition

of the population of our State. r -v~ e te:4-ed

tha..pn- ositiofi.Aa-J..-.wish-k;pnesentt<4he^^the

4Lshtoanight. The details of this problem are so

intricate and the ramifications so baas that it would

take more than the space of this paper to present any

one of a dozen phases of the work.

I want, however, that each one should keep in

mind the elements that enter into the work. First comes











the nation as a whole, which is represented by the

U, S. Department of Agriculture; second is the State

of Florida, represented by the Agricultural College;

third is the local community represented by the County

in which the Agent is working. We have here a tri-

angular arrangement for carrying on this big problem.

The tendency of the national government is, of course,

to centralize activities at Washington and accentuate

the importance of the work from that standpoint. The

natural inclination of the Agricultural College is to

accentuate its part of the program and.attempting to

show its usefulness in carrying out the work. The

County Agent, working directly with the local people,

necessarily centers his ideas upon the local problem

and the County would insist upon having the problem

viewed from the County standpoint. We have here the







5

forces of centralization working and also the forces

of decentralization. Those employed by the Depart-

ment of Agriculture naturally view the problem from the

national standpoint and wish to strengthen their lines

of work in a way so as to make the Federal Government

more powerful. Naturally the State and the County

wishes to strengthen the local organization in such a

way as to work for decentralization, in other words to

be less subject to orders from the Federal Government.

The pas ge f the Morrill Land Grant Act

July 2nd, 1862 was the beginning of a new area. On

May 15th, 1862 a law became effective establishing a

Department of Agriculture. Up to this time it was

the Agricultural Division in the Patent Office in the

Department of the Interior. The Morrill Land Grant

Bill placed the supervision of the Agricultural Colleges











in the Department of the Interior. If there had been

a Department of Agriculture the Agricultural Colleges

would have been assigned to the Department of Agrioul-

ture. For many years the Department of the Interior

simply let the Agricultural Colleges grow as they

pleased. They were looked upon as a sort of unneces-

sary evil,,- something the Department of Interior did

not wish to bother with. This state of affairs re-

fleeted the attitude of mind of the political leaders

of the country. Justice Morrill would have followed

up his lead but the Civil War threatened the life of

the nation. The moral debauch that resulted from the

Civil War was almost as severe a shock. The govern-

ment became so strongly bureaucratic that the people

almost lost confidence in humanity. The passage of

the Land Grant Rna was the entering wedge for the











government to aot in a centralizing way in connection

with our agricultural and educational institutions.

March 2nd, 1887 the Hatch Act was signed, establish-

ing the Experiment Stations as a part of the Agricul-

tural Colleges. The supervision of the Experiment

Station was placed under the Secretary of Agriculture,

who is responsible for the correct expenditure of the

money, and for making the rules and regulations that

govern these institutions. Later followed the Morrill

Act and the Nelson Act. Both of these increased the

endowment of the Agricultural Colleges for teaching

purposes. (In passing I may say that the Morrill

Land Grant Act and the Morrill Act August 30th, 1890,

as well as the Nelson Act, permit moneys to be spent

for other purposes than teaching in the Agricultural


College). Supervision over the expenditure of these





On March 16, 1906, the Adams Act was signed and became


a law. By the passage of this Act a new 4rsprtuTre


was injected into the Federa appropriations. Hereto-


fore Federal appropriations had been made direct to the


State without drastic supervisionasy powers. The Adams


Act, however, contained a provision that before the


money became available a definite program (Projects)


must be submitted to the Department of Agriculture


and passed as acceptable. This gives thee ~S7 ei~-


fs of Agriculture a chance to say what is a proper


line of experimentation to be undertaken under the
Adams Act
Adams Act.










funds is placed within the discretion of the Secretary

of the Interior. Since the passage of the later Acts

a Bureau has been established in the Department of

Interior which has direct supervision over the educa-

tional work of these institutions. A_&saB Aa-t ,TV.Nh L

W6bhi. 191*4 hGcugage Passe as A knvias

the Smith-Lever Aoa which appropriate ) $10,000 to

each State for carrying out Cooperative Demonstration

Work in the various States with the further provision

that there would be an annual increase in the amount

of money received by the States apportioned accord-

ing to the rural population provided the State

furnishes an amount of money equal fo the Federal

Fund less ten..thousand dollars, for carrying out the

provisions of the Act. "h e-l4 -awd-4e-4.awan -s4t -e w

yf State of Florida receives an increment of a little








9


more than five thousand dollars annually until 1922.

After that date the amount will be about $52,000

from the Federal Government. A This law provides

that the money which comes from the Federal Treasury,

as well as the money which comes from the State

Treasury, shall be expended in accordance with the

Act of Congress and rules and regulations promulgated

by the Secretary of Agriculture. The program (projects)

for spending must e prepared in advance and approved

by the Deparn of Agriculture.

The point I want to make is this, that there

has been a gradual encroachment by the Federal Govern-

ment on the State Governments. In 1862 the State was

given 90,000 acres of land for each representative in

Congress. These lands or the proceeds of their sale,

were to be devoted to the furtherance of agricultural







10


education. Of course the States that accepted this


grant assumed the obligation of expending the proceeds


of their sale in such a way as would be acceptable to

the Federal Government, and also assumed the obliga-


tion of conducting the Agricultural College likewise


in an acceptable manner. The same obligations were


incurred by the acceptance of the Experiment Station


Act, the Morrill Act and the Nelson Act. In 1906


a somewhat new element was introduced when the Adams


Act became a law. The money of the Adams Act was made


available only on condition that the States say before-


hand what they expected to use the money for, in other


words they must plan definite lines of procedure, sub-


mit these to the Federal Government, and receive their


approval of the expenditure of this money. When the


Smith-Lever Act passed Congress not only did the Federal









11

Government demand that we should anticipate and formu-

late a plan for expenditure of the money received from

the Federal Government, but likewise for the money

furnished by the State. In other words the Federal

Government comes in to dictate to the State as to how

it shall expend not only the gift from the Federal

Government, but also funds arising within the State.

In 1913 the Page Bill passed the Senate while

a bill very similar to the Smith-Lever Bill passed the

House. The Page Bill had incorporated in it practi-

cally everything in the Smith-Lever Bill but coupled

with it practically all that is now incorporated in

the Smith-Hughes Bill, or what is known as the Voca-

tional Education Bill, excepting that in the case of

the Page Bill the application was much more general


and in some respects the provisions of the Page Bill











gave wider latitude to the local communities. Had the


Page Bill become a law it would have, at one stroke,

placed the supervision of our whole educational system

from the High School through to the University, under

the rules and regulations of an ex officio board ap
61

P3ggBL on account of political preferment. The

situation is not very different under the provisions

of the Smith-Hughes Bill but the Smith-Hughes Bill

covers only the t. ne schools located in several

Counties and the normal schools for training instruc-

tors for tem h 'a- schools. To receive the monies

arising from the Smith-Hughes Bill as in the case of

the Smith-Lever Bill, it is necessary for the State

to appropriate a certain amount of money to meet the

amount appropriated by the Federal government.: The

Federal Government has set up an educational board








13


which decides what is and what is not' owd for these

r and normal school Z~a-e x

In addition to these general laws, acts are

passed from time to time in which the Federal Govern-

ment participates with the State Governments for carry-

ing out certain purposes, for example stamping out the

foot and mouth disease among live stock in various

parts of the United States; the act for eradicating cit-

rus canker in the Gulf States, and numerous other I

might mention of lesser importance to us.

I have reviewed somewhat carefully the pro-


gress and various stages of the Federal laws which have

been enacted to centralizeAthe Federal Government.

I have not mentioned various other acts that have been

passed, which have a far reaching effect upon the

relation of the individual to the Government. The








14

laws I have in mind are such as those which regulate

the character and size of containers in which farm

products may be shipped; the conditions under which

livestock and other animals may enter commercial

channels, etc.

The Agricultural Extension Work in Florida

under its present form had its beginning in a memo-

randum of understanding dated October 1, 1916. Under

this agreement the Cooperative Demonstration Work

as carried on in Florida by the Department of Agri-

oulture was merged with the Farmers' Institute work

being carried qn arale me. The Farmers'

Institute Fund being represented by $2500 while the

Department of Agriculture Fund was represented by

more than $20,000. Practically the same agree-

ment has been continued down to the present. The







15

work has been carried on effectively and with full

satisfaction both to the Department of Agriculture and

to the State, at the beginning of the present fiscal

year the Department of Agriculture furnishing $83,000

and the Agricultural College $54,000, and the various

Counties of the State appropriated about $50,000.

The point I want to call attention to is that in the

beginning the Federal Government placed in about 90%

of the funds, and naturally should have had a very

large voice in the carrying out of the work. Under

jq/7
the arrangement as of July Ist,9the Department of

Agriculture placed in a little more than 20% and yet

under the law has absolute power to make the rules and

regulations for the expenditure of the other 80%.
Aathe ter
t the outbreak of the warther occurred a

very considerable readjustment of our agricultural








16


work in Florida. The general plan carried out by

the County Agent system in the State of Florida was

to center the County work around the County Agent with

the County Agent responsible to the Director of the

Extension Division, the Director in turn being re-

sponsible to the Board of Control on the one hand and.

the U. S. Department of Agriculture on the other.

Under this system the plan of work was to develop an

educated body of farmers in the State (I am speaking

here only of the men's side of the work, while the

women's work was carried out in an identical way)

*the emphasis being laid upon the fundamentals in

agriculture, based entirely upon the results obtained

by the Experiment Station and the Department of

Agriculture. The fundamental ideal in the County

system as it existed before the first of April, 1917,








17

was that of the man, the individual, making the in-

dividual the point of first importance. When War with

Germany was declared this ideal was completely over-

turned and over night the whole system was changed.


The ideal of the man was entirely ignored and the

whole s.. Be oae e ia' the product, whether it be

crop, animals or the food. My special point of

emphasis here is that under the old individualistic

system it would have been absolutely impossible to

have faced about and produced the crop that was needed

in this national crisis.

We sall recognize that since war

has been declared we are not living under a democratic


government but under an autocratic government, in fact

if not in form. War is the most severe shock that can

come to a nation; then it becomes necessary for the










individual to entirely submerge himself and take


dictation from such a source as may be in power at


the time. Necessarily these drastic laws, such as


price regulation of foods, of fuels, espionage and others


that might be mentioned, would not be tolerated in


peace times.


I have now reviewed this whole situation


for you, giving what I believe to be a candid and


impartial statement of the situation. Weas ts




I have discussed and studied it from the standpoint


I have taken tonight during the last four years. It

has given me a very considerable amount ofi ~cLern;


at times it seems as though or--* -F-.-... stx drifting


in a rapid current toward the obnoxious shoals of


bureaucratic government; at other times counter cur-







19


rents seem to have set in that have caused us to

hal and drift on the individualistic side approach-

ing almost the point of personal license. The most

serious difficulty that I see in the present situation

is that we have not gotten away from the dollar wor-

ship. We have only too numerous instances amoig our-

selves to show that the opinion of the man *ith the

dollars is of serious importance, while the man with-

out the dollars, though he be the same individual at

a later or earlier date, is not of serious importance,

nor is his friendship a thing to be especially culti-

vatbed.J I have had an opportunity of discussing the

question as to whether we are drifting into a form of


bureaucratic government and latterly into a national

degauchery such as occurred in the seventies and

eighties, with a number of men of more than local







20


importance. Uniformly their opinion is that such a


social condition will not arise.

I discussed this question somewhat fully


with Col. J. W. Newman, former Commissioner of Agri.

culture for Kentucky and later candidate for the

Governorship of that State and a close personal friend

of President Wilson. His opinion is that our


educational and social tendency is in the direction

of a more useful life, and greater individual freedom

with less individual license.

Harrison M. Dixon, of the Office of Farm


Management, whose special duty it is to work on farm ac-

counts and labor costs, in discussing some phases of the


question was also quite optimistic as to the direct

outcome of our present system of education,as well as

our present social trend.








21


Mr. Wells G, Sherman, of the U. S, Bureau of Markets,

and formerly of the U. S, Civil Service Commission,

regards that there has been a vast improvement in

state and national consciousness during the last ten

years. His governmentalconnection has placed him

in a position to get a clearer insight into the motives

and behavior of people generally than falls to the

lot of the average man.

Dr. W. F. Blackman, former president of

Rollins College and aat one time professor of Political

Economy at Yale, was somewhat less optimistic but

believed that the balance was in favor of a general

moral development and development of State and National

consciousness*










SUMMARY

I. The economic and social conditions of a govern-

ment are never static. The tendency is either

toward centralization or toward decentralization.

II The tendency of our social and economic condi-

tions has been strongly toward centralization in the

last twenty years.

III. Under war conditions our government is strongly

centralized, bureaucratic, dictatorial. This

must be considered but it not the essential

part of this address.


IV, A strong central government wisely administered

is undoubtedly the more efficient, Unwisely

administered it is inefficient, whether a de-

mocracy or a bureaucracy.

In this address I have omitted any reference to




!

'4



I k w u kt c t e- c f
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1










wha.t ha -bean-ee co mlihed. Tdting for granted

that nearly every one present has more or less

definite information in this direction.

VI. The essential feature of this address to which

I want to call your attention, is the strong

centralized power that has developed. By

indirection the government has dictatorial

control over; (a) a large portion of our higher

education; (b) nearly all of the agriculture.

VII. The Agricultural Extension Work in Florida has

been a strong factor in moulding public senti-

ment toward centralization. The results will

be good or be bad in proportion to the moral

standard of the rank and file.










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AGRICULTURAL EITEUSIONT PROBLEM IN FLORIDA

Introduction


GEITTLEMEN OF TH.. ATHENAEUM CLUB, IAU VISITORS:


I am very happy to be able to present to you tonight a paper

on the Agricultural Extension Problem in Florida. I assume that

the agricultural extension problems in Florida, in the larger sense A

are the same as in the other States of the Union. So far as we i
'I
can see the fundamental cause and the fundamental effect are the same.

In this paper I shall attempt to avoid the oratorical since those

papers, especially of mine, where we have attempted to introduce

Dratory were criticized as being demagogic. On the-o\her hand those

-;., l that were presented purely as matters of fact, with bosi-der-

able detail in the way of data, were branded as dry and uninteresting.

.. For the paper tonight, therefore, I am going to'go it as I please,

making use of a multiplicity of data when the 4**tm happens to

tjh rce p, and using rhetorical expressions where that happens to

please me. As a matter of fact I am writing this paper largely to

please myself, and the members of the Athenaeum Club a as

In this paper I want to present some large and fundamental

problems that, so far as my knowledge goes, have not been discussed*

In a measure the discussion will hinge on the war situation, though

this can in no wise be said to be a war essay. Nothing has occurred

in the United States since 1862 that has gripped so closely at the

f.Wdamental principles of our government and the fundamental relation- g .

alips of i-eople wit!l each other, as the war which was declared in

.*e a u r;
pleaseme. Asa mater of act Iam wriin t is"aelreyto -












O A il, 1917. My thesis tonight does not have for its primary ob-

ject the presentation of the general methods of carrying outthe Ex-

tension Work, but I want rather to present the machinery by which

this work is carried out in order that I may bring clearly before

your minds the problems of a social nature that are being worked

out and then present to our view what the effects of this work may

be upon the population of 6ur state. I have now t stated the

proposition that I wish to present to the Athenaeum Club tonight.

The details of-:the working out uf. this problem are so intricate

and the ramifications so broad that it would take more than the

space of this paper to present any one of a dozen phases of the work.

': I want, however, that each one should keep in mind the ele-

ments th-..t enter into the work.. First com,.s the nation as a whole,

which is represented by the U. S. Department of Agriculture; second

is the State of Florida, represented i.y the Agricltural College;

third is the local community represented by the County in which the

Agent is working. We have here a triangular arrangement for carry-

ing on this big problem. The-tendency of the national government

is, of course, to centralize activities at Washington and accentuate

the importance of the work from that standpoint. The natural incli-

nation of the Agricultural Colle'e Jwud.Ima to accentuate its part

of the program and attempting to show its usefulness in carrying out

the work. The County Agent, working directly with the local people,

necessarily centers his ideas upon the local problem and the County

would insist upon having the problem viewed from the County stand 1v4






Ale

,-rb )le-rj- s W ^








ui..^ ^ 61 - e4 -c'1





4AL44- ,4 c~Jr -44-'-s


'St~ .





44ta7. .- '1 ( fca4 e-1 ^fuL


i- S
^-^ Ltr M^
'* :i.; : *; .. ' -.. / * '










We have here the forces of centralization working and also the
Forces of decentralization ..n' awn .. +i 1 rm t'i iILF-

r Vn- L, li-9444y4. Those employed by the Department of Agri-
culture naturally view the problem rrom the national standpoint and
wish to strengthen liniefsin a way so as to make the Federal
Government more powerful. NTatuaally t, e&i r.- the State and
in the Counti wish to strengthen gt the local organization in
such a way as to work for decentralization, in other words to be
less subject to -"Ad.4 orders from the Federal Goverent.
The passage of the Morrill Land Grant Acts J18 2 was the be-
ginning of a new era. The Depa rtment o Agriltur L

^^ .^^Wf- H^ prg.... .. . -n...^ ^.^+ .. ..^ nn J-........A.g ... wor: .1 + 0r '^1^,

Pf- -TTn g+-a s, heALand Grant Bill placed the supervision

of the A ricultural Colleges in the Department of the Interior.
If there had been a Department of Agriculture the Agricultural Col-
leges would have been assigned to the Department of Agriculture.
For many years the Department of the Interior simply let the Agri-
cultural Colleges grow as they pleased. They were looked upon as
a sort of unnecessary evil, something the Department of Interior
did not wish to+ .. with. i nL was the entering 4 f

wedge for the government to &ct in a centralizing way in connec- ft
tion with our,:agricultural and educational institution. -lil
^the:Hatch Actrestablished the Experiment Stations as a part of the
Agricultural Colleges. The supervision of the Experiment Station




S ~a"Ujtj-j-


Alt~~ ACG~r~ :tY r,4udLQ~t4~ ~4 z'




r~,~~t ~j~Lbd~"44
/rCk~CC/











- ~.aN ly under the Secretary of Agriculture, who is responsible

for the correct expenditure of the money, and, for making the .

rules and regulations that govern these institutions. Later fol.

lowed the Morrill Act and the Nelson Act. Both of *these inc asked

the endowment of th Agricultural Call ges for teac purposes., No

(In passing I may say tht tthe Morrill Lan ant Act and the Morrill

Act 1890, as well as the Nelson Act, permiT moneys to be spent

for other purposes than teaching in the Agricultural College.

Supervision over the expenditure'of these funds is-placed within
the discretion of the Secretary of thK Interior. Since the passage
of the later Acts a Bureau has been established in the Department 4
of Interior which has direct supervision over the educational work

of these institutions. In 1914 Cnngress passed an Act known as

the 'Smith-Lever A;t, which appropriated $10,000 to each State for.

carrying out Cooperative Detnonstration work in the various States
with the further provision that there would be an annual increase

in the amount of money received by the States apportioned accdrd-

ing to the rural population provided the State/ furnishe an sUuaT
amount of money for carrying out the provisions of the Act. UaMer
iIi t A. + .h -9+e of .Fl-id. _ill rfo-- oo-e!& L-ee -2 02,000 fr U ..re -


a~sl- er + h_-pi that th"s money which comes from the Fed-
eral Treasury as well as the money which comes from the State, shall

be expended in accordance with the Act of Congress and rules and reg-

ulations promulgated by the Secretary of Agriculture. .



o^^ ^t ^v~r ^L ^i^^ ^ ^t-lt~c ^ '-P; ?i^^ ^'~










The point I want to make is this that there has been a

|. gradual encroachment by the Federal Government on the State govern-

ments. In 1862 the State was given 90,000 acres of land for each

representative in Congress. These lands or the proceeds of their

sale, were to be devoted to the furtherance of agricultural educa-

tion. Of course the States that accepted this grant assumed the

obligation of expending the proceeds of their sale in such a way

as would be acceptable to the Federal Government, and also assumed

the obligation of conducting the Agricultural College likewise in

an acceptable manner. ihe same obligations were incurred by the

acceptance of the Experiment Station Act, the Mprrill Act and the

Nelson Act. In 1906 a somewhat new element was introduced when the

Adams Act became a law. The money of the Adams Act was made.avail-

able only on condition that the States say beforehand what they ex-

pected to use the money for, in other words they must blan definite

lines of procedure, submit these to the Federal Government, and re-

ceive their approval of the expenditure of this money. When the

Smith-Lever Act passed Congress not only did the Federal Government

demand that we should anticipate and formulate a plan for expendi-

ture of the money received from the Federal Government but likewise

for the money furnished by the State. In other words the Federal

government comes in to dictate-to the State as to -wha- e gd s -



In 1913 the Page Bill passed the Senate while a bill

*uL* similar to the Smith-Lever Bill passed the House. The

Page Bill had incorporated in it practically everything in the Smith-












Lver Bill but coupled with it practically all that is now incor-

porated in the Smith.-Hughes Bill, or what is known as the Vocational'

Education Bill, expceting that in the case of the Page Bill the ap-

plicatian'was much more general and in some respects the provisions

of the 2 ill gave wider latitude to the local communities. Had the

Page Bill become a law it yould have, at one stroke, placed the su-

pervision of our whole educational system from the High School through'

to the University, under the rules and regulations of an ex officio

board appointed on account of political preferment. The si-uation

is not very different under the provisions of the Smith-Hughes Bill

but the Smith-Hughes Bill covers only the trade schools located in

several Counties and the normal schools for training instructors for

these trau~e schools. As the Smith-Hughes Bill as in the case of

the Smith-Lever Bill, it is necessary for the State to sp:-ropriate

a certain amount of money to meet the amount appropriated by the

Federal Government. The Federal Government has set up an education-

al board which decides what is and what is not good aoeAem+ --a-tbe

xil for these trade and normal schools.

In addition to these general laws, acts are passed from

time to time in which the Federal Government participates with the

State Governments for carrying out certain purposes, for example

stamping out the foot and mouth disease among live stock in various

parts of the United States, the act for eradicating citrus canker

in the Gulf States, and numerous others I might mention of lesser

importance to us.











I have reviewed somewhat carefully the progress and va-

rious stages of the Federal laws which have been enacted to cen-

tralize the Federal Government. I have not mentioned various

other acts that have been passed, which have a far reaching-effect

upon the relation of the individual to the government. The laws I

have in mind are such as those which regulate the character and size

of containers in which farm products may be shipped; the condi-

tions under which live stock .nmd other animals may enter commercial

channels, etc.











The Agricultural Extension Work in Florida under its pres-

ent form had its beginning in a memorandum of understanding dated

October 1, 1 913. Under this agreement the Cooperative Demonstra-

tion Work as h== carried on in Florira, was merged with the Farmers'

Institute work being carried on at that time. The Farmers' Institute

Fund being represented by $2500 while the Department of Agriculture

Fund was represented by more th n .20,000. Practically the same

agreement has been continued down to the present. The work has.

been carried on effectively and with full satisfaction both to the

Department of Agriculture and to the State, at the beginning of

the present fiscal year the Department of Agriculture furnishin-'

f1 23,000 and the Agricultural College ? A o a 4nd the various

Counties of the State appropriated abour ?50,000. The point I want

to call attention to is that in the beginning the Federal Government

placed in about 90r of' the funds, arid naturally should have had

a very large voice'in the carrying out of the work. Under the ar-

rangement as of July lst, the Department of Agriculture placed in

a eth~ii-n and yet under the law has absolute power to make the

rules and regulations for the expenditure of the other ;.

At the outbreak of the war in-Eturepe there occurred a very

considerable rej.djustmnent of our agricultural work in Florida. The

general plan carried out by the County Agent system in the State

of Florida was to center the County work around the County Agent

with the County Agent responsible to.the Director of the Extension

Division, the Director in.turn being responsible to the Board of Con-












trol -on tl:e one hand und the U. S. Department of Agriculture on the

other. Under this system the plan of work was to develop an edu-

cated body of farmers in the State (I am speaking here only of the

men's side of the work, while the women's work was carried out in

an identical way) the emphasis being laid upon the fundamentals in

agriculture, based entirely upon the results obtained by the Exper-

iment Station and the Department of.Agriculture. The fundamental

ideal in the County system as it existed before the first of April,

1917, was that of the man, the individual, making the individual
the point of first importance. When Warwas declared this ideal

was completely overturned and over night the whole system was changed.

S The ideal of the man was entirely ignored and the whole force accent-
Si ..i i,.. t, '
uated the product,-whether it-be crop, animals, or if t. My

special point of emphasis here is that under the old individualistic

system it would have been absolutely impossible to have faced about

and produced the crop that was needed in this national crisis.

We certainly all recognize that since was has been de-

clared we are not living under. a democratic government but under

an autocratic government, in fact if not in form. War is the

most severe shock thAt can come to a nation; then it becomes neces-

sary for the individual to entirely submerge himself and take dicta-

tion from such a source as may be in power at' the time. Necessarily

*these drastic laws, such as price regulation of foods, of fuels,

espionage and others that might be mentioned, would not be toler-

ated in peace times.













I have now reviewed this whole situation for you, giving

what I believe to be a candid arnd impartial statement of the situa-

tion. There is nothing particularly new about the situation to me.

I have.discussed and studied it from the standpoint I have taken

tonight during the last four years. It has given me .a very consid-

erable amount of concern; at times it seems as. though ~ drift-

ing in a rapid current toward the obnoxious shoals of bureaucratic

government; at other times counter currents seem to have set in

that have caused us to halt and drift on the individualistic side

approaching almost the point of personal license. rbauWijy he

most serious difficulty that I see in the present situation is that

we have not gotten.away from the dollar worship. We have only too

numerous instances among ourselves to show that the opinion of the 4

man with the dollars is,of serious importance, while the man without

the dollars, though he be the same individual at a later or earlier

date, is not of serious importance, no is his friendship a thingto

be especially cultivated. I have had an opportunity of discussing
whether
the question as to whiee we are drifting into a form of bureaucratic

government and latterly into a national debauchery such as occurred

in the seventies and eighties, with a number of.men of more than

local importance. Uniformly their opinion is that such a social

condition will not arise oI discussed this question somewhat fully

with Col. J. W. Newman, former Commissioner of Agriculture for Ken-

tucky and later candidate for the Governorship of that State. His

opinion is that our educational and social tendency is in the direc-






11




tion of a more useful life, and greater individual freedom with

less individual license.

Harrison M. Dixon, of the Office of Farm Management, whose

special duty it is.to work on farm accounts and labor costs, in

discussing some phases of the question was also quite optimistic

as to the direct outcome of our present system of education, as

well as our present social trend.

Mr. Wells G: Sherman, of the U'. S. Bureau of Markets, and

formerly of the U. S. Civil Service Commission, rewards that

there has been a vast improvement in state and national conscious-

ness during the last ten years. His governmental connection has.

1 placed him in a position td get a clearer insight into the motives

and behavior of people generally than falls to the lot of the aver-

age man.

Dr. W. FP.Blackman, former president of Rollins College and,

at one time professor of Political ECOnnlr at Yale, was somewhat

less optimistic but believed that the balance was in favor of a

general moral development and development of State and National

consciousness.




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