The new movement began in Western New York, which is fairly gridironed with a network of these unprofitable branch railroads. It was started even before the panic of 1907. New York State, with its great resources and its fat treasury, has long been engaged in the development of scientific farming--which means farming for the largest profit that can be brought from the soil. It has a great agricultural school as a part of Cornell University, and an interesting experimental school along similar lines at Geneva. These schools have done a great work. They have educated young men to be modern farmers, in every sense of that phrase; and they have sent leaflets to every corner of the Empire State. But even these methods were not far-reaching enough. It is not every farmer's boy in these days who can afford to go down to Ithaca for a college education in the tilling of the soil; few of the older men care to mingle with the boys at such an institution. Even the pamphlets sent out from Geneva were not sufficient. So when the railroads, seeking to make traffic in a dull time and to rehabilitate their branches in the farming districts, made alliance with the agricultural schools, special trains were sent out into the farming districts, and these trains carried a competent corps of instructors from the schools. Day coaches made good school-rooms for the itinerant institutions; and a baggage-car, filled with specimens of fruit and grains grown under scientific methods, was generally attached. The Western roads had used similar trains with success in building up their virgin territories. The use of the scientific schools in connection was the Eastern adaptation of the idea. A train of this sort will "make" half a dozen towns in the course of a day. The towns are not far apart, and the schedule generally permits a stop of about an hour in each. The coming of the "farmers' special" has been thoroughly announced by handbills, posters, and the local newspapers. Whether the day be wet or fair, the appreciation of the enterprise that started the special out is sure to be manifest in a crowd that packs the day-coaches and not infrequently causes overflow meetings to be held from the rear platform of the train. [Illustration: IN THE FAR WEST THE FARM-TRAIN HAS LONG SINCE COME INTO ITS OWN] [Illustration: "EVEN IN NEW YORK STATE THE INTEREST IN THESE ITINERANT AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS IS KEEN, INDEED"] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE DAIRY DEMONSTRATION CAR OF AN AGRICULTURAL TRAIN] There is no cause for disheartenment in the soul of the farmer after he has been down to the train. He learns the things that his land is capable of and yet has never reared for him. Take the perennial and hardy alfalfa, for instance. Crowd into the car, where a hundred earnest men from the country-side are gathered and listening to the man from the State Agricultural College, who talks on it.