of $11,500 by the legislature of 1907 to which the college added $1,000. In 1909 the legislature appropriated $52,500 for the department, the policies and plans of which are established by a committee consisting of the president of the college, the director of the experiment station and the superintendent of the division. The department includes the following forms of agricultural extension: Farmers' institutes; publications for institute members; agricultural railway trains; schoolhouse campaigns; boys' corn growing contests; girls' cooking and sewing contests; rural education; demonstration farming; highway construction; movable schools; special campaigns; publications for teachers; correspondence courses (18 courses offered); home economic clubs.
President Nichols resigned in 1909 and Henry Jackson Waters was chosen by the board of regents to succeed him. The Agricultural College now owns 748 acres of land including the campus of 160 acres. The buildings which are built of white limestone number twenty-one. The corps of instructors numbers 165, and the number of students enrolled in 1910 was 1,535 males, 770 females, a total of 2,305.
Agricultural Society, State.—The first effort to organize a state—or more properly speaking a territorial—agricultural society, was made on July 16, 1857, when a mass meeting was held at Topeka to consider the subject. After discussion pro and con a committee was appointed to draw up a constitution for such a society. Among the members of this committee were Dr. Charles Robinson, W. F. M. Arny, C. C. Hutchinson, Dr. A. Hunting and W. Y. Roberts. An organization was effected under a constitution presented by the committee, but for various reasons the society was never able to accomplish much in the way of promoting the agricultural interests of Kansas. In the first place the projectors of the movement were mostly ardent free-state men, while the territorial authorities were of the opposite political faith, so that it was impossible to secure the passage of laws favorable to the work of the society. Added to this, the unsettled conditions in the territory, due largely to the political agitation for the adoption of a state constitution and the admission of Kansas into the Union, kept the public mind so occupied that it was a difficult matter to arouse sufficient interest in agriculture to place the society on a solid footing. After a short existence it ceased its efforts altogether. The books collected by the society were afterward given to the state library by Judge L. D. Bailey.
The territorial legislature of 1860 provided for the organization of county agricultural societies in the counties of Coffey, Doniphan, Douglas, Franklin, Linn and Wabaunsee, and for the “Southern Kansas Agricultural Society,” but no provisions were ever made by the authorities during the territorial era for a society that would cover the entire territory in its operations.
By the act of May 10, 1861, the first state legislature authorized ten or more persons to form an agricultural or a horticultural society in any county, town, city or village, and file articles of association with the secretary of the state society and with the county clerk in the county
