




































 

 

 

 Curricula for the Country: Farmers’ Institutes in Indiana, 1890-1910 
 

Glenn Lauzon 

Indiana University Northwest 
 

Abstract  

What are farmers’ institutes? Why do they 

matter? Co-organized by the experiment 

stations of land-grant universities and local 

farmers’ associations, farmers’ institutes were 

widespread nationally, from the 1880s to the 

1910s. Today, they are almost forgotten. 

Through a case study of Indiana, this paper 

reveals farmers’ institutes’ formation, 

institutional design, and curricula; in doing so, 

it offers sightlines into significant aspects of 

education and learning in the Progressive Era.  

Introduction  

 The farmers’ institute was modeled on 

the county institutes for teacher training that 

became widespread in the Midwest after the 

Civil War (Fuller 1982). Its two-fold mission 

was to improve agriculture and rural life, by 

educating people to become better farmers and 

members of society. At the turn of the twentieth 

century, the typical farmers’ institute was a one 

or two day event held in a large hall at a county 

seat or rural town. The program consisted of 

lectures and discussions on scientific 

agriculture, practical farming, household 

economy, and the cultivation of rural life. 

Professional men and women and leading 

farmers lectured the audience for half an hour 

or so, sometimes using diagrams and specimens 

as props, then opened the floor for discussion. 

In the discussions, farmers sought clarification, 

challenged the speaker, or explained how their 

experiences validated the speaker’s 

propositions. During breaks, farmers 

scrutinized exhibits of corn, butter, and other 

farm products, while trading opinions with 

neighbors about the exhibits and the scores 

awarded by expert judges. Music and food 

were provided during the day; literary exercises 

and formal addresses took place in the evening. 

By most accounts, when managed well, the 

farmers’ institute was entertaining and 

instructive (Shannon 1945).  

 Maturing and peaking in popularity 

between 1887 and 1914, the farmers’ institutes’ 

moment in history was shaped profoundly by 

two landmarks of federal legislation. The first, 

the Hatch Act, initiated the creation of 

agricultural experiment stations in connection 

with the land-grant colleges, charging them to 

diffuse “useful and practical information,” in 

addition to conducting scientific investigations 

(Knoblauch et al. 1962, 219). The Hatch Act 

spurred ongoing efforts of land-grant 

universities and state boards of agriculture to 

promote some type of lecture-discussion series 

among farmers. Supported by state legislative 

appropriations and increasingly effective 

partnerships between central authorities 

(university or state) and county-level farmers’ 

associations, the institutes grew quickly. A 

national association and the agricultural press 

circulated innovations and experiences, 

fostering standardization and success. Institutes 

continued growing until 1913, when over three 

million people attended nearly 9,000 institutes 

nationwide (Moss and Lass 1988). At that 

point, the Smith-Lever Act effectively 

incorporated the farmers’ institutes into an 

agricultural extension system sponsored 

cooperatively by land-grant universities and the 

United States Department of Agriculture 

(USDA).   

 Despite the farmers’ institutes’ success, 



 

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and their connections to higher education and 

the federal government, they are almost 

forgotten. In the past 40 years, only two articles 

directly address farmers’ institutes: one 

describing “cooking schools” for women (Mink 

2008), the other outlining the federal 

government’s role (Moss and Lass 1988). They 

are not identified in survey histories of higher 

education and agriculture, despite having a foot 

in each realm (Lucas 1994; Cochrane 1979). In 

the land-grant universities’ formative years, for 

good and ill, farmers’ institutes were influential 

in shaping public attitudes (Scott 1963; Marcus 

1986). Nonetheless, treatments of land-grant 

universities fail to mention them (Johnson 

1981). One surmises that the institutes’ failure 

to fit contemporary categories—neither 

agricultural research, nor higher education for 

adults, nor schooling for youth—is largely 

responsible for historians’ neglect.  

 This paper represents a recovery effort. 

Its primary aim is descriptive, to reveal the 

farmers’ institute’s features and developmental 

trajectory. Based on this descriptive analysis, 

this paper’s secondary aim is evaluative, to 

indicate the farmers’ institute’s significance for 

educational developments in the Progressive 

Era. These aims are carried out through a case 

study of farmers’ institutes in Indiana during 

the two decades straddling the turn of the 

twentieth century.   

 Indiana has been selected for three 

reasons. First, farmers’ institutes were most 

popular in states bordering the Great Lakes. 

Second, Indiana’s approach to farmers’ 

institutes synthesized key features of prevailing 

models. In most states, the institutes were 

managed by a state board of agriculture or a 

land-grant university, which received a direct 

appropriation from the state legislature. In a 

few states, institutes were subsidized partially 

by state appropriations given directly to local 

farmers’ associations who managed their own 

institutes (Scott 1970). In Indiana, state 

appropriations and decision-making authority 

were vested in a land-grant university’s 

committee; that committee granted 

considerable autonomy to local associations for 

conducting and financing their institute 

program. This balance of central authority and 

local autonomy may well account for the third 

reason why Indiana has been selected: its 

institutes remained popular, operating in rural 

communities long after some other states’ 

institutes ceased. As late as 1960, annual 

institutes were still being held in one-fourth of 

Indiana’s counties (Thompson and Madigan 

1966). Interpreting durability as an indicator of 

quality, Indiana is well-suited for revealing the 

farmers’ institute’s nature and significance as 

an educational institution. 

  

Forming a Farmers’ Institute System in 

Indiana  

 In the 1880s, the prospects for a lecture 

series among Indiana’s farmers were not 

promising. There was no shortage of 

agricultural organizations in Indiana. The 

difficulty lay in getting farmers to join and to 

attend meetings. Perhaps 15 percent of farmers 

belonged to county agricultural societies, the 

Grange, or independent local clubs. Controlled 

by the county seat’s business men, agricultural 

societies were preoccupied with fairs; unless 

they were protesting against gambling, 

drinking, and sideshows, farmers rarely 

attended their meetings. The Grange, too, had 

lost the farmers’ good will. In the early 1870s, 

as the Grange spread, farmers enlisted it in a 

campaign to defend their interests against 



 

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railroad monopolies, middlemen, and 

merchants. Struggling to restrict the 

membership’s ambitions, by the late 1870s, 

Grange leaders succeeded in turning the local 

organization into a club for mutual education 

and socializing, primarily. Most farmers 

dropped their memberships, having little 

appreciation for self-study clubs; outside the 

Grange, only a few local independent clubs 

persisted (Lauzon 2011).  

 As an educational event, the closest kin 

to a farmers’ institute in Indiana were the 

annual meetings of “industrial associations.” 

Members of these associations adopted a 

particular agricultural pursuit as a specialty for 

investigation, experimentation, and commercial 

exploitation. Collectively, the industrial 

associations represented a very small segment 

of the population—combined membership was 

less than 300—but it was the most influential 

part (Clover Top 1891). Attended by the state’s 

wealthier businessmen and farmers, the 

industrial associations’ annual programs of 

lectures and discussions took place in 

Indianapolis, in January, just prior to the 

convening of the General Assembly. Their 

memberships overlapped with the State Board 

of Agriculture and the State Grange.    

 In the overlapping memberships of 

farmers’ associations, men of like minds found 

common cause. Communities in Michigan and 

Ohio were sponsoring institutes for their 

farmers in the 1880s. Why could not Indiana do 

likewise? Prominent farmers called repeatedly 

for the State Board of Agriculture to lobby the 

General Assembly to provide public financing. 

Preferring appropriations for the State Fair, the 

State Board of Agriculture’s lobbying 

committee ignored farmers’ request until 1887. 

Deadlock over partisan appointments prevailed 

in that legislative session. Unable to secure 

public funding, leading farmers called on each 

member of the State Board of Agriculture to 

organize an institute in his district, for a 

projected total of sixteen institutes. At least 13 

institutes were held. Everywhere, large crowds 

showed up and agricultural discussions proved 

lively. Calling for institutes in their own 

communities, farmers had no difficulty 

securing financial support from the next 

General Assembly (Lauzon 2011).  

 Indiana’s General Assembly gave 

Purdue University an annual appropriation of 

$5,000 to hold institutes in the winter months to 

instruct “farmers and others” in “the results of 

the latest investigations in theoretical and 

practical agriculture and horticulture.” 

Specifying little else, by default the legislature 

left to a university committee the duty of 

devising a system to coordinate, conduct, and 

supervise farmers’ institutes throughout the 

counties (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1892).   

 The committee consisted of Purdue 

University’s president, a professor in charge of 

the experiment station, and another who served 

as superintendent of farmers’ institutes. 

Initially, they worked within the hub-and-spoke 

network formed by the State Board of 

Agriculture and county agricultural societies. 

Adopting the plan used in the demonstration 

trial of 1888, they asked each member of the 

State Board of Agriculture to coordinate 

institute-hosting in his district. Two years’ trial 

yielded “intelligent supervision” in about half 

of the counties only. Consequently, the 

committee eliminated the State Board of 

Agriculture’s role. Appointing a chairman for 

each county—typically nominated by a county 

society or local club—they “placed the 

responsibility for the success or failure of each 



 

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institute where it properly belongs, namely, 

within the county” (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1892, 

465).  

 The man appointed as Superintendent of 

Farmers’ Institutes, Professor William C. Latta, 

could have tried to wield considerable authority 

over the county institutes. That he did not is a 

testament to his unique qualifications. From his 

boyhood on a farm in north-central Indiana, 

Latta acquired the ethos of hard work and 

practicality characteristic of successful farmers, 

along with the ethos of personal responsibility 

to public service associated with devout 

Methodists. Latta obtained the best schooling in 

scientific agriculture available, by way of the 

Michigan Agricultural College. At college he 

learned about farmers’ institutes and the 

necessity of cultivating collaborative 

partnerships with farmers’ associations. Three 

decades of living in Indiana made him well 

aware of regional variability in agricultural and 

marketing conditions. He was well aware, too, 

that local farmers resented nonresident 

non-farmers who condescended to instruct 

them about their business. Few people were 

suited better than W. C. Latta to promote 

agricultural education in Indiana (Whitford and 

Martin 2005).  

 The system Professor Latta developed 

had circumscribed (but highly effective) central 

authority and broad local autonomy. Required 

to organize two-day institutes in 92 counties 

between November and March, he developed a 

schedule of institute dates, assembled a roster 

of traveling speakers, and synchronized their 

engagements in adjacent counties so that they 

could attend three two-day institutes per week 

by traveling from one county to the next on the 

evening train. Before the institute-hosting 

season began, Professor Latta distributed the 

schedule to agricultural newspapers and sent 

county chairmen circulars with suggestions, 

along with record-keeping forms. During the 

season, Latta resolved scheduling issues 

created by snowstorms, illness, and delayed 

trains, while handling receipts to reimburse 

local expenses with state funds. During the 

spring and summer, he canvassed institute 

chairmen for their opinions about topics and 

speakers in preparation for the upcoming 

institute season (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1892).   

 Professor Latta gave county chairmen 

broad discretion to work with local agricultural 

associations to plan and host their institute. A 

broad range of questions were answered 

locally: in what town and facility to hold the 

event, what topics and local speakers to place 

on the program, what entertainments and 

supplemental events to include, and how best to 

make use of the county’s portion of the 

legislative appropriation. When chairmen 

sought Latta’s advice (or his aid with a local 

dispute), he urged them to seek the opinions of 

“thoughtful, conservative and successful men 

both in town and country” (Latta 1894b). When 

given, his opinions were tempered, clarifying 

issues more so than delivering a verdict. 

Characteristically, Latta would remind a 

chairman that, since he was a man of the 

community, he was more qualified to judge 

what was best. Latta even cautioned traveling 

speakers (who represented the statewide 

management at institutes) that it “is always best 

to defer to the local authorities” when problems 

arose, and that they should “use a good deal of 

tact” when correcting chairmen’s questionable 

judgments (Latta 1894a). These self-imposed 

limits on his controlling authority reflected 

Latta’s conviction that the farmers’ institute 

had to be planted and grown in Indiana’s rural 



 

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counties. To the extent that it reflected popular 

preferences, it would thrive or die.  

 Cultivating the public’s good will was 

essential for the man chosen to serve as an 

institute chairman. Indiana’s $5,000 annual 

appropriation was hardly over-generous, less 

than one-half of that provided by some states in 

the 1890s. To defray local expenses, each 

county received $25 in state funds. To host a 

successful institute, a county chairman had to 

draw upon local resources. Newspapers 

announced institute dates and programs at no 

cost. Town businesses paid to print programs 

(complete with advertisements). Sessions were 

held in courthouses and churches. The home 

talent rarely charged fees. Schoolchildren and 

glee clubs supplied music. Improved seed 

varieties, along with agricultural newspapers, 

were distributed free of charge (McMahan 

1893).home talent rarely charged fees. 

Schoolchildren and glee clubs supplied music. 

Improved seed varieties, along with agricultural 

newspapers, were distributed free of charge 

(McMahan 1893).home talent rarely charged 

fees. Schoolchildren and glee clubs supplied 

music. Improved seed varieties, along with 

agricultural newspapers, were distributed free 

of charge (McMahan 1893). 

 Relying upon local initiative and 

rousing the volunteer spirit were not “boom 

methods.” Professor Latta and others sought 

“steady and healthy” growth (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1899, 993). Their approach was 

well-suited to a rural community that had been 

made skeptical, by repeated exposure to 

gimmicks and puffery that, supposedly, would 

improve agriculture (Hayter 1973). The way to 

earn farmers’ trust was to build credibility over 

time, through personal testimonials, direct 

experiences, and constancy. By the mid-1890s, 

in counties with well-run institutes (and at least 

one thriving farmers’ club), institutes were 

overflowing “the largest halls that can be 

secured” at county seats (“Farmers’ Institutes” 

1895, 409). By the decade’s end, an average of 

300 people per county attended institutes 

yearly, with a state-wide aggregate of about 

27,000 attendees (“Farmers’ Institutes” 

1906-07). Without overstating matters, 

Professor Latta claimed that institute work had 

“gained a firm foothold” among Indiana’s 

“most substantial farmers” (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1897, 602).  

 For an educational campaign among 

farmers dispersed across the Hoosier 

countryside, the institutes’ steady growth in 

their first decade was impressive. It should be 

noted, though, that attendance estimates 

included town-dwellers, and that Indiana 

boasted over 200,000 farms. Every county had 

its share of men who were diehard opponents 

of “book-farming” as well as its share of men 

who thought “they knew all about farming and 

could not learn from others” (Harlan 1893).
 

Throughout Indiana, “the average and poor 

farmers [had] yet to feel the energizing 

influence of a closer contact with their most 

wide-awake fellow farmers” (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1892-3, 472). This was particularly 

so for farmers who were separated from central 

towns by poor roads and difficult terrain. 

Persuading a farmer to travel for miles in the 

winter cold to attend a “book-farming” meeting 

was a hard sell. Taking institutes into rural 

townships formed the next phase of the 

farmers’ institute’s development as an 

institution of agricultural education. 

 

Extending the Institute System  

 County institute chairmen’s cooperation 



 

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with local farmers’ clubs was necessary to host 

an institute at the county seat. Local farmers’ 

clubs—usually consisting of several 

families—met monthly at members’ homes. 

With relative ease, farmers could organize 

more elaborate events, such as club picnics or 

one-day township fairs. Almost immediately, 

institute chairmen began organizing additional 

meetings in the help of local clubs. Inevitably, 

the home counties of Purdue University and 

The Farmers’ Guide (Indiana’s leading weekly 

agricultural newspaper) led the way, holding 

“some six or eight independent meetings at 

outlying points,” thereby “bringing the work 

within the reach of every farmer in the county.” 

By 1898, some 15-20 counties were “holding 

such meetings with excellent results” 

(“Farmers’ Institutes” 1898, 590).  

 A campaign among the institutes of 

1900-1901 convinced the General Assembly to 

double the annual appropriation for farmers’ 

institutes to $10,000. Professor Latta planned to 

use most of the increased funding to host 

supplemental institutes “near the boundaries or 

corners of the counties,” to reach farmers for 

whom meetings at county seats were 

“comparatively inaccessible” (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1900, 671). Latta expected about 50 

supplemental institutes to be held in the 

inaugural season (Latta 1901). Despite a few 

“misunderstandings” about distributing public 

funds, 93 supplemental institutes in total were 

held, 70 two-day events and 23 one-day events 

devoted exclusively to dairying (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1901). 

 The township-based institutes 

proliferated. During their second season, their 

number nearly doubled. Farmers’ demands for 

more institutes compelled Professor Latta to 

adopt a formula that allocated institutes based 

on the counties’ square mileage. By the winter 

of 1906-07, a combined total of 273 county and 

township institutes were attended by 50,000 

Hoosiers. Since the township institutes rotated 

from place to place each winter, there were few 

places where a man could claim that inadequate 

roads prevented him from attending. Intended 

to supplement the county institutes, the 

township institutes supplanted them, by taking 

the message of agricultural improvement 

“directly into good farm neighborhoods” 

(“Farmers’ Institutes” 1906-07, 719).   

 Had it compelled chairmen to rely on 

too many non-farmers to serve as speakers, the 

increase in meetings could have undermined 

the institute’s credibility. A “plan of securing 

effective institute speakers” that Professor Latta 

claimed was unique to Indiana prevented that 

from happening. Purdue University had never 

supplied enough “scientific experts” to fill the 

demand. Necessity compelled Latta to cultivate 

“practical workers from the ranks of the 

everyday farmers.” Each year he compiled a 

list of traveling speakers and their topics. The 

list contained experienced speakers as well as 

some “who have never addressed a meeting 

outside of the home county.” To get on the list, 

a person had to speak at local institutes (at no 

cost) and be recommended by a county 

chairman. Once listed, a person traveled and 

earned speaking fees largely to the extent that 

he was invited (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1903, 

665). 

 Making exceptions for scientists and a 

few specialists, to be successful with farmers a 

person had to be a solid farmer and an effective 

public speaker. Of the two qualities, the former 

was “the one fundamental qualification”: “no 

amount of training of tongue or pen can take 

the place of a successful experience in the 



 

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growing of crops and livestock” (Latta 1900). 

Whatever the topic—whether corn-planting or 

cattle-feeding—farmers demanded applications 

and results. They insisted that speakers testify 

about practical experiences, and pressed for 

particulars in question-and-answer sessions. 

Speakers might be denounced still as 

“humbugs” who “really knew nothing about 

farming,” except what they “had prepared out 

of books to suit the occasion” (Husselman 

1899, 275). Some farmers went so far as to pay 

unannounced home-visits to confirm that a 

speaker “is a farmer, lives on a farm and 

conducts farming operations” (Doubting 

Thomases 1899, 567). Not even men who had 

reputations that reached beyond Indiana by way 

of written pieces and advertisements in 

agricultural newspapers were immune from 

suspicion of chicanery.  

 Farmers’ skepticism stemmed only in 

part from speakers’ seemingly exaggerated 

claims of yields, profits, and accomplishments. 

The fact that they were speaking in front of an 

audience of strangers cast doubt on their claim 

to be genuine farmers. Farmers’ own aversion 

to speaking in public forums limited the 

institutes’ appeal, initially. People were 

inclined to think of the speaker’s work as 

reading prepared texts interlaced with literary 

and historical allusions while audiences 

“seldom took an active part in discussing the 

subjects.” To break the crust of formality, 

institute chairmen were told to discourage the 

“mere reading of a paper without any fixing of 

the points by informal discussion” (Latta 

1896a). To bolster participation, chairmen 

borrowed from the Grange the query box 

technique. Into a box, farmers placed slips of 

paper containing questions; later, the speaker 

drew questions and invited others to respond. 

In addition, speakers were encouraged to 

reserve one-fourth of their allocated time for 

discussion and to give informal presentations. It 

was hardly unusual to find a speaker reading a 

prepared text, word-for-word, but the next 

speaker might speak from an outline, use 

diagrams, charts, and a blackboard, and permit 

spontaneous questioning. As the corps of 

institute speakers gained experience, “the 

methods of the school room” became 

increasingly common (“Farmers’ Institutes” 

1903, 665).  

 For even the best speakers, the farmers’ 

institute audience could be a tough crowd. It 

contained farmers and non-farmers, people who 

were college-educated and others who were 

functionally-literate only. Some people sought 

entertainment, others useful instruction. Some 

people insisted that speakers talk about their 

own farms, while others denounced such talk as 

“boasting” and anecdotal stories (Latta 1899c). 

While most people wanted practical farming 

tips, in every community, a few people’s 

knowledge of agricultural science rivaled that 

of the experts. To meet the conflicting 

demands, the institute program included at least 

one experienced state-sponsored traveling 

speaker who led a few sessions and was joined 

by the home talent, people from the community 

who talked about local farming conditions 

during daytime sessions, and performed literary 

exercises in the evening. Through the blending 

of emphasis and style, the institute appealed to 

a broad audience and, simultaneously, reflected 

the local community.   

 

Developing and Broadening the Institute 

Program  

 To better discern and meet the needs of 

Indiana’s rural communities, in 1898, chairmen 



 

66 

 

and other people involved in farmers’ institutes 

began gathering annually. Known as the 

Conference of Institute Workers, the meeting 

was essentially a model farmers’ institute. 

Based on their observations and experiences, 

people suggested topics to Professor Latta, who 

solicited speakers and developed the program. 

Some sessions were devoted to the practical 

side of institute work. These sessions were 

divided into several informal talks (each 10-15 

minutes) on issues such as choosing subjects 

for the program, enlisting the support of local 

businesses, advertising the institute, or 

improving the means of instruction; following 

the series of talks, a general discussion was 

held. The immediate objective was to make 

participants aware of ways to interest local 

farmers in institute work more efficiently and 

effectively.  

 The Conference of Institute Workers’ 

program included sessions featuring 

high-profile authorities from Indiana, other 

states, land grant universities, and government 

agencies. Typically, such sessions presented 

three different perspectives. At a session 

devoted to the beef industry, for instance, a 

slaughterhouse representative revealed the 

“Outlook for beef cattle in Indiana”; 

afterwards, two farmers described their 

experiences using “Silage in beef making,” 

followed by a University of Wisconsin scientist 

who explained “Feeding problems” various 

forages posed for animal health. Similarly, at 

another session, after two prominent Hoosiers 

explained how improved roadways would 

benefit farmers and municipalities, 

respectively, the Chairman of the National 

Commission for Highway Improvement’s gave 

his rationale as to why the state government’s 

financial support was necessary (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1899).   

 The Conference of Institute Workers’ 

sessions were educational and promotional. On 

the educational side, bringing in the experts and 

examining a topic from three sides was “a 

powerful means of opening the eyes and 

enlarging the ideas” of an audience (Latta 

1899a). On the promotional side, the 

Conference of Institute Workers was not just 

any audience. As the Conference closed, 

participants declared their collective opinion on 

particular issues. Acting on the resolutions, 

traveling speakers revised their topics and 

presentations for the upcoming institute season. 

In townships and counties, the chairmen were 

ultimately responsible for selecting both topics 

and the speakers. As such, whether the topic 

was “Good Roads” or “Rural Schools,” the 

Conference of Institute Workers was “a golden 

opportunity to sow good seed” on the right kind 

of soil (Latta 1899b). Speakers and chairmen 

could make an issue a prominent subject of 

conversation among Indiana’s farmers, and 

through them, its legislators.   

 Initially, the Conference of Institute 

Workers directed its efforts to increasing the 

institutes’ public funding. A bit slower to take 

root and grow, the Conference sought to 

increase the number of farmers’ wives and 

children at institute meetings. Significant for 

boosting the attendance of adult male farmers, 

prioritizing women and youth’s inclusion 

brought their interests onto the program,  

broadening the farmers’ institute’s scope and 

refashioning its educational purposes.  

 Women had always been involved in 

farmers’ institutes, most often by participating 

in musical interludes and literary exercises. 

Only the occasional woman delivered a lecture 

on women’s issues, such as the well-managed 



 

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kitchen, the wife’s duties in the farm home, or 

properly educating the farmer’s daughter. 

Committed to women’s equality and to 

growing institutes, Professor Latta repeatedly 

informed chairmen that “in not employing the 

ladies” they were making a “great mistake.” At 

the least, he insisted, one lady ought to give a 

paper in the evening, to “give tone to the 

Institute and help to draw out a good 

attendance” (Latta 1896b). Beyond that, Latta 

urged chairmen to feature topics of interest to 

women. By the late 1890s, roughly 20 counties 

were holding separate sessions for women 

(“Farmers’ Institutes” 1899).         

 Professor Latta made women’s issues 

part of the overarching agenda of the 

Conference of Institute Workers. He designated 

a full session (one of five) at the second annual 

meetings as a women’s session, importing two 

women from Michigan and Illinois to tell the 

audience about the “Needs of the Farmers’ 

Wife and Daughter” and “Industrial Education 

for Women” (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1899). The 

following year, Indiana’s most prominent 

farmer’s wife, the wife of Governor James 

Mount, addressed a session on “The Farm 

Home.” Meanwhile, Professor Latta, acting on 

his own initiative, hired a woman from 

Wisconsin to travel to farmers’ institutes for 

several weeks demonstrating cooking 

techniques and delivering lectures on nutrition 

and kitchen management. Her mission was to 

supply knowledge of domestic science and 

economy to Indiana’s farm women and to 

create a demand for more of it. Building on the 

interest the lady-lecturer generated, Professor 

Latta sponsored a Women’s Conference in 

1901 for women who were involved in institute 

work.  

 Many of the thirty or so women who 

attended the Women’s Conference went to the 

annual Conference of Institute Workers several 

weeks later and secured its commitment to 

bolster women’s work in the local farmers’ 

institutes (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1901). 

Professor Latta sponsored another lady-lecturer 

to travel to nearly half of Indiana’s counties. 

She complained about talking to “empty seats” 

in some places, but her promotional efforts 

were effective (Latta 1902). The Conference of 

Institute Workers called for every institute to 

dedicate at least one session to “home topics, 

such as health, clothing, furnishings, food, 

standards of living, the use of money, etc.” 

Institute chairmen were instructed to appoint 

committees of women to help prepare the 

program and to encourage women to form 

home-makers’ clubs. The Conference of 

Institute Workers also requested Professor 

Latta to hire expert lady-lecturers and to give 

financial aid to summer meetings (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1904). The next winter, when 

another lady-lecturer toured Indiana, she could 

not meet the demand for engagements, despite 

being employed for the entire season and 

attending 72 different institutes (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1905).   

 The lady-lecturers’ successful winter 

tours depended, in large measure, on 

promotional work the previous summer. In 

some places, farmers’ clubs held annual picnic 

gatherings. With Professor Latta offering to 

solicit and reimburse speakers (especially 

lady-lecturers), the earliest “summer institutes” 

grew out of these picnic gatherings. At the 

summer picnic institutes, adult men and their 

farming concerns were conspicuous by their 

absence. Instead, farmers’ wives encountered 

an educational fare of food preparation and 

kitchen management, poultry-keeping, and 



 

68 

 

child-raising, intermixed with kids’ games, 

socializing, and food from picnic baskets. 

Together, the touring lady-lecturers and 

summer picnic institutes gave a powerful boost 

to interest in using educational means to 

improve farm women’s conditions. It became 

standard practice almost immediately to hold at 

least one women’s session during the winter 

season’s farmers’ institutes (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1906-07).   

 The priority given to women’s work 

reflected a growing conviction that the 

institutes ought to have a broader purpose than 

presenting farmers with “results of the latest 

investigations in theoretical and practical 

agriculture and horticulture.” In practice, 

farmers’ institutes had always encompassed 

more than their legislative mandate. Professor 

Latta, for his part, made no effort to discourage 

topics such as the mutual interdependence of 

town and country, rural free delivery, road 

improvement, and the status of farmers. These 

were not strictly agricultural topics, but people 

assumed that they belonged on the program. By 

the late-1890s, the same could be said about the 

needs of farm women, district schools’ neglect 

of agriculture, or tips to make farm life more 

appealing to youth. As the twentieth century 

opened, farmers’ institutes centered on 

practical farming, but gave a good deal of 

attention to the household, farm life, and rural 

community. When President Theodore 

Roosevelt appointed a commission in 1908 to 

investigate “country life” he popularized a label 

that captured the curricular varieties in farmers’ 

institutes.  

 In its report, the Country Life 

Commission devoted much attention to rural 

schools and farm youth (Country Life 

Commission, 1975). Local and state farmers’ 

institutes were well ahead of the national 

commission. In 1899, Indiana’s Conference of 

Institute Workers featured the State 

Superintendent of Public Instruction’s advice 

on “How to make the rural schools most 

helpful to agriculture” (“Farmers’ Institutes” 

1899). Two years later, the Conference 

resolved that institute chairmen should use part 

of their sessions to awaken public interest in 

introducing “Nature Study and the simpler 

elements of agriculture” into the district 

schools (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1901). After two 

more years, the Conference gave its full 

promotional muscle to farm youth. In a session 

titled “Farmers’ Institutes and the Rural 

Schools,” the State Superintendent of Public 

Instruction and four county superintendents 

presented ideas and examples of collaboration 

between institutes and district schools. The 

Conference as a whole approved a committee 

report that made two revealing 

recommendations: holding joint sessions of 

farmers’ and teachers’ institutes, and inviting 

schoolteachers and county superintendents to 

supervise half-sessions spotlighting the 

agricultural work of local youth (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1904).  

 Broadly speaking, by promoting youth’s 

involvement in the institutes, the Conference 

hoped to instill “a higher appreciation of farm 

life and farm business.” Concerns about the 

out-migration of youth from rural communities 

were endemic in the early twentieth century. 

The Conference faulted adult farmers for their 

habit of magnifying the allurements of other 

professions by continually disparaging their 

own. The remedy was straightforward: adult 

farmers needed to show “pride in their 

vocation” and to encourage their children to 

take pride in it, too (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1904, 



 

69 

 

785). As a public forum in which people could 

display their work-related learning and 

accomplishments, a farmers’ institute was 

well-suited for achieving that aim. Offering a 

prize for writing and reading an essay on a 

farm-topic was unlikely to enthuse youth. Far 

more excitement was generated when local 

institutes began holding competitive exhibits of 

farm and home products made by youth.   

 Although county fairs and farmers’ 

clubs had been holding agricultural exhibits for 

decades, few exhibits were educational in a 

systematic sense before the turn of the 

twentieth century. To be sure, it was possible 

for a person to learn by observing products of 

the field and kitchen on display at the county 

fair, particularly if the exhibits’ merits were 

discussed with others. That sort of learning was 

undirected and incidental. By design, exhibits 

at farmers’ institutes were different. At a 

minimum, scorecards identifying criteria and 

numerical point allocations accompanied the 

exhibits. Directing observers’ attention toward 

particular features and indicating their relative 

significance via point values, the scorecards 

were educational devices in their own right. 

Widely-distributed at institutes and in 

agricultural newspapers, scorecards set 

standards, frames of reference that people used 

to discuss the exhibits’ merits and demerits. 

 The scorecards formed the basis of an 

additional educational feature that was absent, 

typically, from a nineteenth-century county 

fair: public judging. For most fair exhibits, a 

judge or committee awarded prizes without 

ceremony, and without offering rationales. At a 

farmers’ institute, judging was used to educate 

the audience. Two basic styles emerged. In the 

more common style, judging was an “object 

lesson.” An expert judge evaluated the exhibit 

using the scorecard, then, criterion by criterion, 

identified the point values assigned and 

explained his reasoning. In the alternative 

“class exercise” style, a small group of people 

(youth exhibitors, typically) evaluated items on 

display using a scorecard; an expert judge then 

reviewed their scores and explained why his 

judgments differed (“Farmers’ Institutes” 

1903). Regardless of the style, the intent was to 

guide people’s observation, thinking, and 

judgment, and both the exhibitors and 

spectators were the targeted students of an 

expert.  

 For the youth who prepared an exhibit, 

the judging exercise culminated a year’s worth 

of learning. An upcoming contest would be 

announced at a farmers’ institute meeting and 

an informational circular distributed. The 

scorecard set the benchmarks for success; the 

circular outlined the rules for participating. 

Competing youths learned and worked largely 

in self-directed fashion, as they saw fit seeking 

information and guidance from other people, 

agricultural newspapers, and bulletins issued by 

agricultural experiment stations. In places 

where county fair associations joined with 

farmers’ institutes to sponsor contests, youths 

had two opportunities to exhibit. They could 

show at the county fair and then again at the 

farmers’ institute, if they wrote a report of 

production processes and results. For showing 

at the county fair, youth won small cash prizes; 

farmers’ institutes also offered first-place 

winners scholarships to a week-long 

agricultural short course held at Purdue 

University during the winter (“Farmers’ 

Institutes”1903). 

 Opportunities for youth to exhibit might 

be available at district schools as well, 

especially for boys who were interested in 



 

70 

 

growing corn. By 1905, at least nine county 

school superintendents were cooperating with 

farmers’ institutes and the state-wide Corn 

Growers’ Association to organize corn contests 

and clubs for boys (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1905). 

Directly and personally involved, county 

school superintendents solicited financial 

support (for seed corn and prizes) from 

township businesses, held informational 

meetings with parents, distributed seed corn 

and instructed youth in planting and tillage, 

inspected the boys’ corn plots during the 

summer, and worked with teachers to host 

one-day “fairs” at district schoolhouses (Haines 

1905). Success with boys’ corn clubs fueled 

interest in similar clubs for girls in making 

bread and butter. At farmers’ institutes, youth 

displays and judging began receiving full 

sessions; district schools began closing their 

doors for the day so that all children could 

attend (Latta 1907).    

 By 1908 boys’ and girls’ competitive 

exhibits were being held in more than one-third 

of Indiana’s counties, and it seemed obvious 

that they would be central to the future of 

farmers’ institutes. For the long-range future, 

the contests were “reaching the farmers of 

tomorrow,” inspiring and equipping youth to 

apply agricultural science on Indiana’s farms. 

For the immediate future, institute chairmen 

had “a prime means of interesting the old 

folks.” It simply could not be denied: “where 

the boys and girls have come out successful 

Institutes have been held” (Latta 1908). Local 

communities experimented with an expanding 

array of contests: wheat, oats, potatoes, poultry, 

pickles, preserved fruit, aprons, and more. 

Adults’ enthusiasm for youth contests and club 

work lay behind the Indiana General 

Assembly’s third—and penultimate—major 

action affecting farmers’ institutes. 

 The farmers’ institute legislation of 

1907 did three main things: it sanctioned the 

expanded scope and purposes of institute work; 

it instituted standing county-wide 

organizations; and, it offered the prospect of 

direct public funding to meet local expenses. 

The legislature’s endorsement of farmers’ 

institutes’ role in cooperatively-sponsoring 

boys’ and girls’ contests was the most 

significant feature. To assume that role, 

however, the other two components seemed 

necessary. After all, initiating and sustaining 

youth work throughout the growing season 

required some kind of institutional and 

financial support. As envisioned in the law, 

counties that formed standing associations and 

raised at least $100 in annual membership fees 

were eligible to draw matching funds from the 

county treasury. The money was to be used to 

cover local expenses incurred in hosting 

institutes and contests for youth (“Farmers’ 

Institutes” 1906-07). With an invigorated 

mission, sources of funding, and a permanent 

infrastructure, the farmers’ institute seemed to 

be on the verge of expansion.  

 When he hailed the 1907 legislation’s 

potential for moving “Indiana into the foremost 

rank in the Farmers’ Institute work,” Professor 

Latta was surely correct. Equipped with, 

potentially, up to $18,400 (from membership 

fees and county treasuries) annually to cover 

local expenses, surely farmers’ institutes could 

do a great deal more good for Indiana’s rural 

communities (“Farmers’ Institutes” 1906-07, 

741). Professor Latta could not have anticipated 

that, in the next decade the farmers’ institute 

would be relieved of much of its educational 

burden. Through the combined impact of 

legislation passed by Indiana’s General 



 

71 

 

Assembly and the United States Congress, 

farmers’ institutes were incorporated into a 

system of agricultural extension that included 

(among other agencies) the 4-H, the Farm 

Bureau, and the county demonstration agent. 

For the rest of the twentieth century, these 

institutions were generally associated with 

agricultural extension, even though in some 

communities farmers’ institutes continued for 

decades.  

 

Conclusion  

 By the early twentieth century, the 

farmers’ institute was well-established in an 

educational niche that overlapped roles played 

by the weekly agricultural newspapers 

(self-study), local granges and farmers’ clubs 

(monthly mutual education), and county fairs 

(annual exhibits of innovations and excellence). 

Comprised of an interdisciplinary curriculum 

and the best pedagogies, at its finest, the 

farmers’ institute gave participants an 

encounter with recent scientific investigations, 

an array of practical applications via oral 

explanations, demonstrations, and exhibits, and 

ample opportunities for exchanging ideas 

among an assembly that included experts, 

practitioners, novices, and youth. Educational 

experiences resembled those of a university- 

level classroom, a Chautauqua, a farmer’s club, 

and a county fair. The farmers’ institute was an 

innovative educational agency. It was also 

highly adaptable, particularly in light of the 

Conference of Institute Workers’ role in sifting 

local experiments and redeploying ideas into 

the townships. That, of course, raises the 

question: why was the farmers’ institute 

supplanted by other institutions of agricultural 

extension?   

 Earlier generations of agricultural 

historians claimed that farmers’ institutes fell 

victim to their success. Instrumental in 

awakening farmers’ interest in agricultural 

science, the institutes “outlived their 

usefulness,” as farmers began demanding 

instruction that was more advanced, 

specialized, and specific to the problems of 

their home farms (Scott 1970, 136; True 1969). 

That claim holds merit insofar as it goes, but it 

is insufficient. Even if some farmers’ 

agricultural learning outpaced the institutes’ 

carrying capacity, the institutes were 

discovering new purposes. Moreover, if a 

sizable proportion of farmers had grown 

discontented, institute-attendance would have 

declined. Attendance actually increased 

steadily, a fact that can be verified by the 

statistics found in the USDA Yearbook. That 

situation changed after Congress passed the 

Smith-Lever Act of 1914, when some state 

governments and universities’ agricultural 

departments stopped sponsoring farmers’ 

institutes and channeled resources into other 

forms of agricultural extension.  

 It may be useful to envision the 

farmers’ institute as the watershed of the 

nineteenth century’s educational efforts in 

agricultural improvement. Agricultural 

education institutions that had existed for 

several decades did not pave the way toward, or 

culminate in, the farmers’ institute. Rather, a 

miscellany of organizational features, 

instructional purposes, and teaching strategies 

were brought into the farmers’ institute. Several 

streams of educational effort flowed out, 

carrying a fairly coherent agenda into federal 

policy (notably, the Country Life Commission 

and Smith-Lever Act), into the land-grant 

universities (agricultural programs and 

extension courses), into rural schools (nature 



 

72 

 

study and vocational agriculture), and into rural 

communities (4-H clubs and county extension 

agents). Arguably, the farmers’ institutes’ 

greatest crop was a coalition of people who 

learned how to use mechanisms of public 

policy to redesign the institutional and 

educational context that surrounded it. That 

learning did not take place in instructional 

sessions devoted to livestock or farm life. 

Rather, it was generated by an institutional 

infrastructure that stretched across geographic 

space, bringing farmers into interchange and 

coordination with farmers in other places, 

experts in land-grant universities and the 

USDA, and decision-makers in all levels of 

government within the federal system.    

 As an educational form straddling the 

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the farmers’ 

institute is fairly typical of the Progressive 

Era’s early years, particularly in its supporters’ 

growing preferences for formalized instruction, 

government-affiliation, and permanent funding 

sources. As such, the farmers’ institute offers a 

glimpse into the kinds of educational efforts 

reform-minded people directed toward their 

adult counterparts. The farmers’ institute may 

serve, also, as a useful counterpoint to 

prevalent conceptions of how education and 

reform operated in the Progressive Era. As a 

delivery system for conveying ideas and ideals, 

the farmers’ institute relied upon voluntarism 

and suasion, in sharp contrast to say, urban 

vocational schooling or citizenship training for 

recent immigrants.  

 A final point about intergenerational 

learning: the farmers’ institute carried the 

nineteenth century’s tradition of 

self-improvement through the pursuit of useful 

knowledge into the twentieth century. Applying 

rationality and emergent scientific knowledge 

to pressing concerns in everyday life formed its 

main mission. More often than not, adult 

learners became convinced of both the value of 

science and the potency of education. That they 

did so by participating in an educational 

institution that incorporated youth was 

significant; the experience surely shaped the 

rising generation’s normative expectations for 

dealing with contemporary social problems, 

deploying scientific expertise, and educating 

youth to participate in civil society. In light of 

the sightlines it offers into these dimensions of 

American society in the early twentieth 

century, what seems remarkable about the 

farmers’ institute is its absence from the history 

of education. 

  

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