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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
The B.A.E.-Extension Service views quoted above stress the importance of securing on planning committees representatives of all economic, social, racial, and geographic groups found in the county. To what extent are such groups represented on planning committees at present?
A wide geographic distribution of representation is, of course, more easily secured than any other kind of distribution. Geographic boundaries between groups are easily recognized, and it is usually taken for granted that distinct areas should be separately represented. A distribution based on type-of-farming areas will, of course, mean representation of geographic areas. And geographic distribution will ordinarily achieve some degree of distribution among social, economic, nationality, or other groups. In practically all counties, the county committee includes at least one member from each township, other civil district, or type-of-farming area in the county. Ordinarily this is achieved by making the chairman of each community committee, or other member selected by the community committee, also a member of the county committee. In a few cases where the county committee was set up first, a member from each township or district was made responsible for selecting the members of a community committee for his area.
28 E.g., Mississippi and Alabama.
29 Johnson, Embree, and Alexander quote the following summary from a study of “The A.A.A. and the Cropper” by Hoffsom: “… The cropper is looked upon as a dependent person, the more extreme but not uncommon views regarding him as a class apart, incapable of ever achieving but a modicum of self-direction…. There is a considerable feeling among landlords that anything which disturbs the cropper is undesirable. Forty per cent of the [800 landlords interviewed in 1934] stated, for example, that they were opposed to the granting of relief to these people because of its demoralizing effect upon them….” Op. cit., pp. 58–59.
30 About fifty per cent of the population of the county is colored. Sixty-five and seven-tenths per cent of farm operators are tenants; fifty-four per cent of the tenants are sharecroppers; about fifty per cent of the tenants are Negroes.
31 In The County Agent, (Chicago, 1939), Chap. 8, Gladys Baker discusses some of the difficulties that colored Extension workers face.
32 Forty-eight counties in thirteen states out of a total of 1,120 counties. Figures are taken from U.S.D.A., B.A.E. and Extension Service, “Report on the Progress of Land-Use Planning during 1939,” p. 9.
33 According to Gladys Baker, “The county agent in about fifteen states is legally responsible to the county farm bureau organization. In approximately eight states, where the county appropriation is mandatory, responsibility to the farm bureau almost entirely replaces responsibility to the county governing-board.” Op. cit., p. 135. The contribution of the federal government and of the state is automatic if local conditions for extension work are fulfilled. In the majority of states, this leaves the appointment of a county agent, the size of his salary and operating budget, and even the suspension of extension work, up to the county governing board, which controls county appropriations necessary to supplement federal and state appropriations. But if county appropriations are also made mandatory, and if extension work is made dependent upon Farm Bureau coöperation, the Bureau becomes the active controlling agency.
34 The County Board of Supervisors must appropriate funds for extension work when a county association is organized with 200 members and pledges of dues amounting to $1,000. The county Farm Bureau determines the county agent's salary beyond a minimum amount fixed by federal and state funds, and can get rid of a county agent by simply withholding county funds. The Farm Bureau is a commercial as well as an educational organization, and its state and national federations are active legislative lobbyists.
36 Cf. Baker, op. cit., pp. 136–137. A Land Use Planning report from Adair county la., summarizes as follows: “… On the one hand, in carrying on a broad educational program, [the county agent] states that his services are tax supported and, therefore, open to every farmer; on the other hand, when he puts on a Farm Bureau membership drive, prospects want promises of exclusive services and benefits. Relations between the Extension Service and the Farm Bureau have been unusually harmonious; however, as each organization expands its separate programs and goals, the present official relationship in the counties lends itself to conflicts and misunderstandings. The Farm Bureau Board, as it undertakes a wider variety of non-educational activities, is likely to think that it is unduly dominated by extension officials and is forced to emphasize educational programs, slighting other Farm Bureau activities. … On the other hand, workers in the Extension Service are almost forced to engage in non-educational activities to maintain harmonious relationships.” Adair County Agricultural Planning Committee, “Annual Report of Unified Program,” May 17, 1940 (mimeo.), p. 29. In 1936–39, Farm Bureau contributions to extension work in Adair county amounted to 13.5 per cent of the total amount spent. Ibid., p. 30.
36 Cf. Baker, op. cit., pp. 139–141.
37 It has a membership of 74,000, and is the largest purchasing coöperative in the United States.
38 I omit consideration of New York because there local representative committees are not an important part of the planning organization.
39 In Lewis county, W. Va., the Bureau had to approve selection of the county as a “unified” county, and fifty per cent of the elected community committeemen and most of the county committeemen are Bureau members. In Carleton county, Minn., the Farm Bureau Board and the County Board of Supervisors appointed a tempoary County Planning Committee, and about fifty per cent of the committeemen selected later are Bureau members. In Missouri, where the Farm Bureau Board is the Extension advisory board in about one-third of the counties, it was reported that there was a tendency for the Bureau to monopolize membership on the planning committees in those counties.
40 U.S.D.A., B.A.E. and Extension Service, “Report on the Progress of Land-Use Planning during 1939,” p. 9.
41 Ibid., p. 9; figures as of December, 1939.
43 This has been so, for example, in W. Va., Va., Miss., and Mont.
44 “National Land-Use Programs and Local Governments,” National Municipal Review, Vol. 28 (1939), p. 111 ff.
45 U.S.D.A., B.A.E. and Extension Service, “Report on the Progress of Land-Use Planning during 1939,” p. 9.
46 Cf. paper read by M. L. Wilson (former Under-Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, now Director of Extension Work) at 36th Annual Meeting, American Political Science Association (Political Theory Section), Dec. 28, 1940, and numerous other speeches by Mr. Wilson.
47 “The A.A.A. Experience and Guild Socialist Theory,” paper read at 36th Annual Meeting, American Political Science Association (Political Theory Section), Dec. 28, 1940.
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