One of the threats in the 1932-1933 attempt to cut expenses at state schools was to eliminate all courses in agriculture except at Texas A. & M. A review of the activities of the agriculture programs at SFA reveals at least a few of the reasons why this assault on the regional universities failed.

Agriculture was one of the original departments at SFA, that is if you can call one person a “department.” Professor J. H. Hinds, an expert in poultry husbandry, was one of the original faculty members. President Birdwell, concerned from the beginning to be of service to the farmers and well as to their children, decided that support for agriculture at the college was one of the college’s most important missions.

Hinds turned out to be a true pioneer in agricultural education in East Texas. He served not only as a teacher, but also as the county agent, an advocate of extension courses, and an active researcher. He was one of the first advocates to take education to the people who needed it rather than waiting for them to come to the campus. For instance, in October of 1923, he organized one of SFA’s first extension courses in Martinsville, a class for dairy farmers. He did so because the people in Martinsville indicated an interest in his services. He pledged to do as much teaching outside of the campus as his schedule on the campus would permit.

Hinds immediately saw the potential for profitability for East Texas in the poulty industry. Through regular classes on campus and through extension courses in the area, he pressed his case that the flocks in East Texas were unscientifically managed; the farmers were not sensitive to the problems caused by indiscriminately cross breeding. Hinds warned that the even the best feeding methods would not pay if the farmers did not take notice of the breeding procedures. Hinds and his students worked with farmers to cull their flocks, to introduce new and improved breeds, to introduce ways to control lice, and to advocate the supplement the types of feed which were given to the stock. He became convinced that a model farm was the only way he could set an example and educate students at the same time.

The “Ag Department” was the first at SFA to have its own building. In late 1924, Hinds convinced Birdwell to allow his classes to move into the newly relocated “Shack” from the Washington Square campus. His move out of the ground floor of the Austin Building to the Ag Shack was only the beginning of his expansion. By 1926, his classes and his program necessitated an expansion of the “department” to include someone specialized in animal and dairy husbandry. He asked Dr. D. D. Giles, a veterinarian in private practice in the town since 1924, to join the faculty. The two men began eyeing the substantial acreage which lay east of the Austin-Rusk complex for the development of an experimental farm–on campus. Birdwell supported the idea and asked the Board of Regents in 1929 to fund this new enterprise; the aim was to make the farm into a self-supporting entity and to furnish an agricultural laboratory for students. In 1930, the Legislature appropriated $25,000 to build a dwelling house, two barns, and three poultry houses as part of the creation of a true experimental farm of approximately 163 acres. Hinds and Giles constructed fences and separated the farm-campus into several blocks. Some were used for growing feed and some for pastures and some for the planting of an orchard. They purchases farm machinery, a pair of mules, and later livestock. The whole experimental farm was complete by 1932.

In 1932, the farm set out to prove that chickens would pay. He stocked the farm with the best, big bone, strong white Leghorns and raised them under real conditions. With 150 hens, he showed that by December he could clear $500 in egg production the first year. Hinds said, “One of the purposes in creating the college farm on the old Thomas J. Rusk homestead was to distribute good breeding stock at cost prices to farmers throughout this section of Texas.” Hinds deserves to be called the “father of the poultry industry” in East Texas.

Some of the ways the college helped during the Depression were: to distribute quality poultry stock at cost, offer short courses on feeds and breeding to local farmers both on campus and off, and constantly to demonstrate for farmers scientific ways of running a farm operation. Dairy and Poultry farming were taught to college students by day and by night to the parents of those students. The interplay between the farm industries and SFA, discussed earlier in the series in an interview with representatives of Texas Farm Products, was profitable for both. Hinds and Giles were busy men. The practical nature of their educational responsibilities and their professionalism endeared them to regional farmers and provided a useful example to legislators who visited in 1932 that SFA was serving real needs in the East Texas area duing a time of depression.