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"W
tr AGICULTTRATJ COLL-rG AND PARfMY LTMUR
EXMK SION DIVISION
y, P. He Rlfa *
Mr.Chairman, Ladies and Gentlenaes
t is with a great deal of pleasure that
I am able to be present with you today and dliver an add"
dress to you an this Vury important subject to the State of
Florida. I knaw that you are thoroly interested in the
subject that I am about to diosuses otherwise it would not
have been possible for you to have gone away frame the may
attractions an the grounds ad the splendid exhibits that
are being staged here at the Florida State Pair. It is
indeed an inspiration to us iwhio have worked for these many
years for the apbuaflding and betterent of the agriculture
in the State. It comes as a fitting climax at the lose
of the year, enabling everyone to see the agriculture of the
State at a glance. The magnificent exhibits that we have
here speak volume for the possibilities of our glorious
State and the fact that yao eam absent yourself fros the
magnifieent speotale on the grounds, speaks volumes for
year interest in the prepsm this afternoon,
The subject allotted to me is "Te Agricultural
College and Agg.sultural EIxtens tn Divis ion." This at een
is aswh a bti abject that it is worthy of the at tent ton
anzy maae I aS ready to speak on fhe subject any titae
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whether I have two minutes, twenty minutes or two hours.
It is big enough for a two minute subject, not too big for
a twenty minute and small enough to take two hours to discuss
it. I am however, going to confine myself to a few of the
most important points and the things that we want you to know
especially about the institution.
The Agricultural College of Florida was es.
tablished by legislative act in 1884, in which the State
accepted a federal gift of ninety thousand acres of land,
which v;ere sold and the proceeds invested in bonds. This
is the fundamental act establishing the Agricultural College*
In 1906 the College of Agriculture as a part of the University
was moved from Lake City to Gainesville. In 1910 the Uni-
versity was organized into different colleges. We now have
five distinct colleges in the University: the College of Arts
and Sciences, the College of Agriculture, the College of
Engineering, Teachers College and Law College, each one having
a head master known as Dean.
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE
The Agricultural College proper ca ries out
its line of work in three divisions. The first division
devotes its entire attention to the teaching of agricultural
professors
subjects to young men resident at the institution. Theo also
give a considerable amount of time to short courses and to
some extent to lectures over the State. Necessarily a
professor ast be at his classroom and teach his classes
regularly and constantly. He cannot do justice to his
students if he is from three to five hundred miles away,
lecturing to farmers gatherings. We have six men, all
specialists in their line, who are giving their most careful
attention and highest devotion to instruction in agricultural
subjects. In addition to these men there are nearly a store
of other men teaching allied subjects, english, chemistry,
mathematics and other subjects necessary to a rounded education.
Last year we had in the Agricultural College
an attendance upward of 200. These younf men are among the
most earnest that may be found in the State and the most
eager to learn that will be found in the country anywhere,
a considerable number coming from other states and taking their
education here because they own property in the State ande are
taking up their residence among us. Naturally these men are
aggressive and know exactly what studies they want. They
make some of the best students that we have in the University.
At the time when the bugle sounded the
clarion of "-ar, our Agricultural College as well as the
University as a whole had readphed its highest point of ef-
ficiency and organization. The Agricultural College had in
it over 150 men and a large class was ready to graduateo
but when the June graduation arrived, not a single able-bodied
man remained and many of those who were physically unfit had
found some excuse or some means of getting to the front.
During th war our whole institution was turned over to the
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War Departaent and it was conducted a a war college. Our
prafesora, some of whom had spent as naih a SB yeirs ia
their specialties, were assigned to classes with which they
had not been fa liar for two or three doeades, It was re-
gnitsed that the young men who were preparing themselves for
the 'defense of the country needed training other than that ef
agriculture. ImEndiately after the clon of the war, roe
organisation had to take place. This meant a very seritos
and difficult radjuatwent. The students and professors
alike hav borne this astuation with the greatest of fortitude
and have made exceptional progress,
Ladies and go tl~aen, this is the tirr of
readjustment, realtgoent and the beginning of s' new erPa
whether we recisnise it or twether we., do not recognize it,
changes and progress will go on as inexorably as if .a
understood the operation. We will never sea the same old
world again as we had it five years ago. Many of us of the
old r generation cannot accept the situation and we are
still fandly clinging to the ideals of the paste
The young mn who have graduated fra
Agricultural College have given an unruually god acaetnt of
themselves, They have been firemr t ~l war# foremost in
pee9 a: foremost in the development of the agricultural
sciences. They are net yet old enough to have made omene
than local records but they are already being hnard from
and in another de ad will be among the leaders of the
asothl not of the Nationen
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EXPERIMENT STATION
The second division of the Agricultural
College devotes its entire time to investigational work.
This is usually smasaxsy known as the Experiment Station.
It was established in 1888 by a fund set aside by the Fed-
eral Government for the use of the Agricultural College for
the purpose of acquiring and disseminating useful agricultural
information. This is a trust fund ($30,000) received annually
from the Federal Government, administered entirely by the
State, the only condition being that it be spent in accordance
with the requirements of the law. Annually a Federal Inspec-
tor is sent to the various states to determine and inquire
whether the state is carrying out the requirements of the law
in the expenditure of this trust fund.
You will notice that the bacis condition is
that of acquiring and disseminating useful agricultural know-
ledge; knowledge that is already had cainxa no longer be ac.
quired, consequently the Experiment Station must be inquiring
into unknown fields for the sake of discovering in them useful
agricultural information. The law further specifies that
this information shall be disseminated by means of bulletins
and annual reports. The Florida Experiment Station has pub-
lished 158 bulletins, 321 press bulletins and 31 annual reports,
this being 38 bulletins, 321 press bulletins aheqd of the re-
quirements.
There are many important discoveries made by
and the -nole of o vhe of isch hasto the
the Experiment Station SQ been dissemiinated to the
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people of the State. Much of this information is so patent'
at the resent time that the .a"eae .farmer x~en little dreams
S and cmis in.atIng of the Knowledge of
that thirty years ago 'it was unknown, The discovery otAhe
as saving
fungi parasite upon the whitefly alone lmsCsa:ed the citrus
growers of the State some$3,000,000 annually.
There is only'one Florida. Florida was the
first
MaaEy State in which the velvet bean was voown. The Florida
Experiment Station had to work alone and single handed in the
its feeding value and its limitations
testing out of kk a ixKap As late as 15 years ago, the crop of
velvet beans was not considered of sufficient importance to justify
its being listed by the Bureau of Crop Estimates, The value of
the crop for the present year is something over $3,000,000 to say
nothing of the 4,000,000 acres of velvet beans that are grown in
the ot.er southern states. Fifteen years ago only one variety
of velvet bean was known to the United States; it was the old
Florida Speckled. The introduction and breeding of the new
velvet beans when written out in full, reads more interestingly
than a romance. The velvet bean crop has become so important
to the south that large quantities of them ate being transported
as dairy feed to New England. In some cases it has become so
in fertilizer formulae
abundant as to have been used/in the place of other fertilizer
materials to obtain ammonia for plant food.
One of the mo t recent discoveries made by the
Experiment Station has been brought out in connection with its
studies of the soft pork problem. In this the Animal Industria-
list, by taking samples of fat before the feeding was begun
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taking Mother sample at the end of 42 days and a third sample
at the close of the feeding period was able to discover ex-
actly what changes took place in the melting point of the fat
of the various animals Director Duggar of the Alabama Exr
periment Station in a lecture before the Livestock Roundup,
pronounced it the most important advance that had been made in
soft pork studies in the last 25 years.
AGRICULTURAL -XTEISTON DTVIT ONS
The third division of the A'gricultural College
of which I wish to speak is the Agricultural Extension Division.
passage of the
This was established in 1914 as a result of the/Smith-Lever
Act. The Emith-Lever Act appropriated to the Land Grant
Colleges, certain amounts of money, aportioned among the states
in proportion to the total rural population of the United
States. Under this grant, Florida receives this year $43,515.89
provided the State of Florida will match the $43,515,89 with
$35,515.89 additional to be used for the same purpose. The
Smith-Lever law specifies that this money shall be used only
for instruction in Agriculture and home Iconomics by demonstra-
tion or otherwise, to people not resident at the College.
I will not burden you with various details
as to what is prmissible and what is not permissible in the
expenditure of this fund. You are all however, perFeabry
familiar with the county agent and the home demonstration agent
as they occur in Florida and in every other state in the Union.
No where in the world has any government, at any time, been as
liberal and as far sighted in its development of agriculture
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as has the United States with the appropriations made for the
agricultural extension act. The Director of the Extension work
is made responsible for the carrying out of the provision of
the act and the workingg out of the details of the plans in the
State. In Florida we have entered into a cooperative arrange-
ment with the State College for .'omen and also with the negro
college for carrying out the general plans as proposed in the
Smith-Lever Acto Under the provision of the Act we have been
able to employ 30 county agents and 30 home demonstration agents,
in as -ainy different counties. The conditions of the employs
meant in a county is that the county will vote a certain amount
of funds to carry this work on in their respective counties.
These county agents and home demonstration agents and the various
specialists working in this organization, bring the messages of
the latest scientific discoveries in agriculture dire tly from
the Department rf Agriculture at Cashington and fri the Agri-
cultural College at Gainesville to the farm home T: e men
carry the scientific discoveries law to the farmers and the
woMen the scientific discoveries dire -tly to the women, F'hen
you remember that theA county agents last year addressed an
audience of over thirty thousand people, wrote 26,000 official
letters, to say nothing of having traveled a distance equal to
ten times around the world, you will get a somewhat comprehensive
idea of the activities of the County agent. The home demon-
stration agents have been no less active in their undertakings.
The distance traveled by the home demonstration agents was
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somewhat less than that traveled by the county agent, but the
number of people in attendance on their lee ures ras more than
20 percent great W More than 1,300,000 contairers were
filled wittHi-juits and vegetables and over 8,000 women enrolled
in the dsnonstration classes, with over 4,000 girls enrolled
in the girls classes. I should like to continue to give you
many more figures, but figures become tedious and meaningless
when too great. multiplied. I r:ant however, to irprews upon
your ,iind the trcrr;enduous value that the county agent and home
denmonstrp. ion i -ent ie to the state of Florida.
nieu I loo at the various count-7 fairs that
I visit. ajd even when I vi t the State Pair, I ca.-ot help
but ac.0'ire the : on.- rful kik pluck of these agents in getting
up the rasgnifIcert e-xhibi.ts. :.More progress has been iade in
agricultural exhibit. line in the Inst ten years than there
was mad in-r: the previous tLy years. I know because I
have attended practioall.r all the fairs that was wcrth the
while tlat have been held in Florida since 1891.
However, I must not tell you too much about
the women's work in this cooperation extension work, as Miss
Partridge is to come on this program and give her entire
attention to the cooperative extension work in home economics.
CONCLUSI N
Your Agricultural College is entrusted with the
responsibility of training our young agricultural leaders of
the future. She has already trained many of these who Pre
our present day leaders.
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your Agrioultural College thbu the Experlment Statict is
entrusted with the duties of delving into the mysteries
of nature And by scientific and exact iaethods wringing from
her tlhe seorats which she holds to mnke a more glorious and
greater State*.
Your Agricultural College is entrusted with *
the duties of carrying scientificc aid exact informatloi to
all of the agricultural people of the Stn.-te. It is a big
task, far beyond the possibility of the present force to
accomplAsh, but we are doing aPgreat work, and it is very
greatly appreciated.
Your agriculturall College has bren unfairly
treated by the recent legislature when it comes to means of
support, I will not dwell upon this point at this time, but
want everyone of you to stand Fquarrely behind the EducEational
Committee and give them all the support you are capable of.
They have studies this question and are devoting themselves
to the task of presenting and passing the educational budget
without Peward and at their own expense*
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