profitable crops the occupants of such lands moved to new soils and pursued their former methods, until large areas by this practise were impoverished and became unremunerative. Public men seeing this, and appreciating the consequences to the country if the rural districts became unproductive, began to plan for preventing further waste of soil fertility and for the restoration of worn-out and abandoned land. Conferences upon these questions became common, and societies in the form of farmers' clubs, state and county agricultural organizations, fair associations and similar meetings of farmers were formed and their members met at stated times to discover means for arresting the decline and to provide for increasing future production."

1

Agricultural Legislation Leading to Extension.

Beginning with the Morrill Act of 1862 and ending with the Lever Act of 1914, there has been a constant stream of federal and state legislation for agricultural education in one form or another. The chronological history of such a legislation shows conclusively the triumphant march of industrial and vocational education into the ranks of traditional,classical pedagogy. The recognition of the importance of the science that feeds, clothes and shelters has been manifested by the munificent appropriations from federal and state sources, for its development. All educational institutions have been endowed where agriculture has been taught. Reaching far up into the millions, supplemented as these state and

1. Office of Experiment Stations.Circular No. 98 page 3.

federal appropriations are by funds from private sources, as

shown in other pages of this work, it is safe to say that the end is not yet.

The Morrill Act of 1862.

The first effective legislation in the United States
Morrill Act of 1862,

for agricultural development was the

commonly called the Land Grant Bill of 1862. Introduced by Senator Morrill of Vermont as far back as 1857, it finally passed both Houses a number of years later, was signed by Lincoln and became a law on July 2, 1862. It donated an equal amount of public land to be apportioned to each state, a quantity equal to thirty thousand acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which the states were entitled by the census of 1860. The money received from the sale of these lands was to be invested in United States bonds or other safe securities and " the interest shall be inviolably appropriated to the support and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts." This bill was recognized as the most important single specific enactment ever made in the interests of education. In making its purpose the development of industry through the application of the scientific principles and teaching of industry, it has recognized that that industry is the tool of civilization and that the greater number of people will always be engaged in such activity.

The Hatch Act of 1887.

The agricultural colleges had not been established very long when great disappointment was experienced because of the extremely small attendance. Those who did attend were not satisfied because of the unpractical instruction that they were receiving. It was noticed that upon graduation very frequently many went into other professions. Literature was lacking, experimentation had not been done to any extent, the teacher of agriculture was spending the greater part of his time in the other branches of learning and it was becoming evident that information in agriculture was dying out. In order to attract the farmers and to prevent the agricultural colleges from dying out an act was passed in 1887, creating the Agricultural Experiment Stations.

This act provided an appropriation of $ 15,000 annually to each and every state for the purpose of defraying the expenses of conducting investigations and experiments in Agriculture and for publishing and distributing the results of such experiments. The importance of this act cannot be underestimated. It was some time,of course,before the agricultural colleges could recover the progressive stride they had made, due largely to the fact that there were few men trained to teach agriculture and conduct investigations and experiments, but the psychological thing had been done in the passage of the Act and agriculture was ready to go on.