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Show Released br Western Newspaper Union. HOW COUNTY AGENT TLAN WAS FORMED THAT JAMES J. HILL, then president pres-ident of the Great Northern railroad, was the father of the county agent system, would probably be news to the great majority of American farmers, and a large percentage ol the county agents. On a Saturday in, as I remember, the early summer of 1909. Jim Hill presented his ideas for carrying agricultural ag-ricultural education to the farmers to Howard Gross. In a Chicago club they talked of it through the afternoon after-noon and well into the evening. Before Be-fore I was out of bed the next morn-1 ing. Sunday, Gross called me on the 1 phone to say he needed assistance and was coming to my home. The assistance he wanted was in the preparing of the provisions of a bill that would provide for an agricultural agricul-tural expert in every county in the United States that produced anything any-thing in the way of grain, feed, live stock, poultry, fruit or any other product of the soil. We worked at that job all through the day and well into the night. The problem was to provide for the building of a large group of farm experts with school of agriculture training, In which no semblance of partisan politics could ever be introduced. The work of that day was the first draft of what became the Smith-Lever bill as Introduced In congress. Before it was enacted Into law it saw many changes In detail, bat retained the fundamentals, funda-mentals, and, we believed, was proof against any partisan political po-litical machinations. By the end of another week an organization bad been perfected, and a meeting held at the Union League club, in Chicago. Attending At-tending that meeting were nationally na-tionally prominent Industrialists, railroad presidents, bankers bat no farmers. It was that group, following Jim Hill's Inspiration, that, in time, secured the enactment enact-ment of the county agent law. It took four years to get the bill through congress. The mo?t strenuous strenu-ous opposition came from the lea1 expected source, the department ol agriculture. The objection of the department was largely based on the one point on which we were insistent, in-sistent, that the agents should be selected and paid by the state uni versity schools of agriculture, the money to be supplied by the federal government. That was the method through which the county agents were not to become tied in with any political machine. The agricultural department wished to name the agents. That the National Soil Fertility league, the organization that proposed pro-posed and backed the legislation, was not successful In keeping the county agent out of politics has been amply demonstrated. Through the years ways have been found to make him a party adjunct through utilizing utiliz-ing the county agents as distributors of government payments to the farmers. The agent has, despite the efforts of those responsible for the creation of the job, become a worker work-er for whichever party is in power. Such is the wily ways of politics and politicians. FOR AN OLDSTER NECK BONES! THERE ARE TWO OF US twi adults with reasonably good appetites. appe-tites. That means two ration books, with their limited, very limited, number num-ber of red coupons. It was 10 days before the next lettered coupons could be used and I had only 20 valid red points to last through those 10 days. I stood before the meat case in the market looking wistfully al a rib roast of beef. How I should like to carve that at a dinner table, and sink my teeth in a luscious rare slice of it. but I had only 20 red points and 10 days to go. Beside me was a woman, the mother of Ave children, the oldest under 10 years, the two youngest not yet past the milk and gruel stage. That meant seven ration books, with two adult stomachs to fill. The woman did not hesitate. She ordered the roast. and naa points to spare which she was fearful she would not be able to use. It would take something more than Senator Taffs proposal to remove price ceilings on meat to solve my problem. But what an incentive in-centive for babies, and more babies, ration points can be. What a handicap handi-cap is age. The butcher found some neck bones for me. A GREEN LAWN. How glorious it can be. What an addition to the attractiveness of a home. How we prize it until comes the day when the wife says it must be cut Then concrete would be preferable. BECAUSE OF THE ATROCITIES committed In this war the civilized people of the world justifiably ciass the Japs as barbarians. The atrocities atroci-ties uncovered by the advance of the Allied armies through Germany and Poland would justify the same classification for Hitler and his followers, fol-lowers, including much of the German Ger-man army. War, at best, is a brutal job, but the treatment accorded Germany's Ger-many's war prisoners Is without any semblance of excuse, even In war It represents the acme of barbarism. |