The lack of opportunity for high school training in so large a part of each county, brings about an increasing migration into the county seat for educational advantages. Many families leave their ranches and move in for the winter instead of sending a child or two. Some come in for elementary schools, because of bad roads and the inaccessibility of their country school. This is one of the greatest factors in the growth of these centers. To illustrate the number of pupils from the country, 150 of the 522 pupils of the Sheridan High School are non-resident and all but about ten are from Sheridan County. In Union County, fifty of the 225 pupils in the Clayton High School come from all over the county, the majority coming from ten miles around Clayton. The number of county children attending Clayton schools is increasing at the rate of about 15 per cent. a year. These children have certain marked characteristics. They are older for their grade than the town children, they average higher marks, and are anxious to make the best of their opportunity. In other words, they do not take education for granted, like the town or city child.
No greater laboratory exists for scientific farming than in this western country. A Farm Bureau, popularized through county agents, is an asset of prime significance to a region that will endow the rest of the country with the fruits of its development. Hughes, in 1915, was the first of the four counties to organize a Farm Bureau. Sheridan and Union followed in 1919. Beaverhead County has no Farm Bureau. A County Farm Agent was employed for eight months in 1918, but did not have the support of the ranchers. They felt that an agent, in a stock raising county like Beaverhead where hay flourished without cultivation, was a needless expense. As one rancher remarked, "We did not want some one who knew less about our business than we did." As an index to the success attending expert farm advice, one entire community in Beaverhead attempted and abandoned dry farming, whereas in other counties where Farm Bureaus and agents have given service and advice no entire community has failed so completely.
The Farm Bureaus not only improve agricultural methods, but are creating local leaders and a community spirit. The Farm Bureau offers a definite program that is rewarding if adopted. It develops in the individual community a spirit of independence and self-respect which must precede coöperation. The Sheridan Farm Bureau records a typical objective: "to promote the development of the most profitable and permanent system of agriculture; the most wholesome and satisfactory living conditions; the highest ideals in home and community life, and a genuine interest in the farm business and rural life on the part of the boys and girls and young people.... There shall be a definite program of work ... based on the results of a careful study of the problems of the county. It shall be formulated and carried out by the members of the organization, with the assistance of their agents and specialists as may be available from the State Agricultural College."