land'
(1819) the social library is almost as regularly mentioned in the
descriptions of the various towns as are the saw-mills, or the ministers
and doctors."--Bidwell, "Rural Economy in New England," p. 347.

[44] In the _Inland Printer_, February, 1920, quoted by Atwood, l. c.,
p. 305.

[45] "The Cornell Reading Course for the Farm," Lesson 155, March, 1920.
See also his "The Country Newspaper and the Community," Chicago, A. C.
McClurg & Co., 1922.

[46] Quoted by Atwood, _l. c._, p. 314.

CHAPTER X

THE COMMUNITY'S EDUCATION (CONTINUED)

THE EXTENSION MOVEMENT

The era of modern agriculture in the United States began with the
passage of the Morrill Act by the Federal Congress in 1861. This made a
grant of public land to each state to establish a college for
instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts, and it has been the
influence of the "land-grant colleges," more than any other agency,
which has been responsible for our agricultural advancement. In 1888 the
Hatch Act made an annual federal appropriation to each of these colleges
for the establishment of an agricultural experiment station, whose
investigations, with those of the United States Department of
Agriculture, have been largely responsible for the scientific basis of
modern agriculture.

From the beginning the agricultural colleges realized their obligation
to bring the results of scientific investigations to the attention of
farmers as well as to their own students, and their faculties spoke
before meetings of state and county agricultural societies, granges, and
farmers' institutes. In 1875 Michigan was the first state to make an
appropriation to its State Board of Agriculture for conducting farmers'
institutes, and in the next twenty-five years most of the states
established systems of farmers' institutes either under their state
boards or departments of agriculture or under the agricultural colleges,
through which itinerant speakers addressed one or more meetings of
farmers in each county every year. These institutes grew in popularity
and led to separate meetings for farm women, and sometimes for children,
and in some cases permanent county organizations were created for
holding institutes with local speakers as well as for managing those
furnished by the state. Farmers' institutes have performed an important
service in the education of the rural community. Not only have they
given instruction in methods of agriculture and in th