Immediately following this Farmers' Short Course comes the Annual Farmers' Conference which holds its session in January of each year. To enforce the lessons in canning, stock raising, gardening, and all the other branches of farming, exhibits of the best products in each activity are displayed before the audience of farmers and their families, who number in all about 2,000. These exhibits are made and explained by the farmers themselves. The man, woman, or child who has produced the exhibit comes to the platform and explains in his or her own way just how it was done. In these explanations much human nature is thrown in. An amazingly energetic and capable woman had explained at one of these gatherings how she had paid off the mortgage on their farm by the proceeds from her eggs, her kitchen garden, and her preserving in her spare moments when she was not helping her husband in the cotton field, washing and dressing her six children, or cooking, mending, washing, and scrubbing for the household. In conclusion she said: "Now my ole man he's an' old-fashion farmer an' he don' kere fur dese modern notions, an' so I don't git no help from him, an' that makes it hard for me 'cause it ain't nat'ral for der woman to lead. If I could only git him to move I'd be happier jest ter foller him." While these explanations are going on the farmers in the audience are naturally saying to themselves over and over again, "I could do that!" or "Why couldn't I do that?" One of Mr. Washington's chief aims was to increase the wants of his people and at the same time increase their ability to satisfy them. In other words, he believed in fermenting in their minds what might be termed an effective discontent with their circumstances. With this purpose in view he addressed to them at these conferences such questions as the following: "What kind of house do you live in?" "Do you own that house?" "What kind of schoolhouse have you?" "Do you send your children to school regularly?" "How many months does your school run?" "Do you keep your teacher in the community?" "What kind of church have you?" "Where does your pastor live?" "Are your church, school, and home fences whitewashed?" The farmers who were asked these questions would make an inward resolve that they would do what they could to put themselves in a position to answer the same questions more satisfactorily another year.