Twenty-six or more states have passed legislation which enables the county officials to help support the County Farm Bureau and the great Smith-Lever bill is now in effect, which enables the government to put money exactly in the spot where most needed, and it is the opinion of Dr. C. B. Smith, the highly efficient leader of State Leaders in the North and West, that it will only be a matter of a few years when every county in the United States will have a local association for better farming, better business and better living which will include the better agricultural and business brains in each vicinity and which will employ as part of the plan, a county agent who will be paid by all factors concerned.

We should be congratulated upon the success of this great movement. Without detracting in any way from the glory and credit due to the myriad workers in this field, it is with great satisfaction "we point with pride" to the fact that the plans of organizing advocated by the Crop Improvement Committee are now in general use in every state except Nevada, and Dr. Smith tells us that Nevada is ready to swing into line.

The Crop Improvement Committee was enabled to speak with authority because of the administration of a fund of $100,000$1,000 of which was given to each of the first hundred counties which would organize a Farm Bureau, which great campaign was completed within one year from its conception.

It is remarkable that none of these counties which have been properly organized, have failed to maintain the organization, which is all the more remarkable because each county agent had to invent his own job, had to fight petty politics, had to overcome the strongest kind of prejudice and to make a showing against almost insuperable difficulties. That is now all in the day's work, which is a matter of great satisfaction to those who inaugurated the movement.

The work of crop improvement for the past year cannot be epitomized in a few sentences. The financial assistance given by the United States Brewers' Association has enabled your committee to conduct a line of work which otherwise would have been impossible. In the matter of publicity alone, the returns have been manifold.

The circulation of The County Agent, which is published by the Committee, has been increased to 20,000 and the campaign now

so well under way, is establishing from fifty to one hundred readers in each of the barley growing counties. We hope to be able before the end of this ensuing year to double the circulation again, as we have done in 1915.

We have published the barley seed lists from all the barley centers, we have tested seeds for all applicants from all parts of the map, we have put buyers in touch with sellers, we have helped to establish one variety of barley in a neighborhood, and we are happy to report that we are receiving the hearty co-operation of all along the line.

A great many barley meetings and grain schools have been held and the committee has supplied the speakers with Barley Charts— 200 of them having been placed during the year with county agents, agricultural high schools, local committee men and officers of farmers' clubs, etc.

It is almost impossible to get an adequate moving picture of a year's campaign because it takes a year to make such a picture, therefore, some of the things which are prominent in our work have been necessarily omitted but we are sure that the moving picture we are showing you to-day will give you a much better comprehension of the work than you can possibly get from a printed or statistical report.

We wish to thank you for your enthusiastic support but as our friend said to Sempronius, "'Tis not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more,-we'll deserve it."

Respectfully submitted,

E. A. FAUST, Chairman

GUSTAVE PABST

AUGUST FITGER

THOMAS ALTON
HUGH F. Fox, Secretary

REPORT OF THE PUBLICATION COMMITTEE

The Trustees, in providing for the great extension of the work of the Publication Committee, have recognized the urgent importance of continuing to put the facts before the people of the United States. Until this work was started, there was no adequate means of exposing the sweeping assertions of prohibition agitators,

who beginning their campaign long before the brewing business was well established in this country, secured a widespread and persistent circulation for their plausible misrepresentations. The facts that the Publication Committee has already assembled from official reports, documents and investigations have been of the highest value in conclusively showing that the prohibitionist assertions that the legalized sale of drink is the prime cause of adversity, pauperism, crime, disease, insanity, industrial accidents, high taxation and other factors have been and are gross distortions utterly at variance with the carefully ascertained facts.

It can easily be understood, however, that once a series of misrepresentations get a long start without being effectively challenged, they travel far and wide, and among the uninformed their reiteration tends to make them be accepted without serious question. Understanding this, the Publication Committee aims above all things to gather and make public further facts. To put the facts especially on this subject effectively before the people is a very painstaking, large and costly undertaking, necessitating the utmost care in the assembling and verification of the facts. The work of getting the facts can best be done from one central point, but their dissemination depends largely upon the co-operation of State and local organizations. Inevitably there is much waste in such work, and large immediate results may not be apparent, but if the work is well systematized and persistently maintained, the cumulative effect is bound to tell eventually.

The competent persons employed in our investigations have been instructed to get the facts from authentic records and other such trustworthy sources, and nothing but the facts; and to conduct their work in a scientific spirit, avoiding entirely the tactics of the other side of prejudice and prejudgment, distortion and exaggeration. Our program is to let the facts tell their own tale.

The method of a social investigator is totally different from that of a newspaper reporter, who necessarily always has to work against time, and therefore must by the circumstances of the case take the news as it is given to him,-news embodying statements often purposely inaccurate or made so by certain parts of the context being omitted because of pressure of time or space. The newspaper reporter has not the time to compare statements with facts,