Spring 2004 -- Vol. 57, No. 2

Teaching. Research. Public service. These pursuits are the pillars of Clemson’s mission as a land-grant university. When Thomas Green Clemson willed his property to South Carolina for the establishment of a “high seminary of learning” in 1889, the teaching and research components of that mission had already been established by federal legislation.

It wasn’t until 1914, however, that Asbury Francis “Frank” Lever made the third pursuit possible. He helped ensure that the learning achieved through teaching and research on land-grant campuses would ultimately extend to the citizens of the states in the form of public service.

Lever was born to Francis Asbury Washington and Mary Derrick Lever on Jan. 5, 1875, near Spring Hill in Lexington County. He graduated with honors from Newberry College in 1895, and, after a brief tenure as a schoolteacher, began his political career in 1897 by serving as secretary to congressman J. William Stokes. Lever studied law while serving in that post, and in 1899, he received his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.

Lever was devoted to the needs of agriculture and farming interests across South Carolina and the rest of the United States. Despite unsuccessful bids for governor in 1930 and congressman in 1932, Lever had a long and successful career. From 1901 to 1919, he served as a U.S. congressman and member of the agriculture committee, which he chaired from 1910 to 1919. He served as a member of the Federal Farm Board (1919-1922), organized the First Carolina Joint Stock Land Bank (1922-1929) and was strongly affiliated with the Farm Credit Administration (1933-1940).

He also served as chairman of the board of trustees for Newberry College and was a Clemson life trustee from 1913 until his death.

Just as Lever’s political career was taking off in the early 1900s, so was the idea that agricultural pursuits across the land could be improved by the sharing of information learned within the land-grant college system.

Through the efforts of men like Seaman Knapp, president of Iowa State College, and U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who established the Country Life Commission, the idea to create a formalized extension service began to take root. Lever made sure that the idea was nurtured and eventually bore fruit.

Noting that agricultural colleges and the U.S. Department of Agriculture were in possession of valuable information, Lever insisted that if this information were made available to the farmer, it would form “a complete and absolute revolution in the social, economic and financial condition of our rural population.”

Identifying the fundamental problem — linking the farmer with the new research and information — Lever asserted, “The agent in the field of the Department and the college is to be the mouthpiece through which this information will reach the people — the man and woman and the boy and girl on the farm. You cannot make the farmer change the methods which have been sufficient to earn a livelihood for himself and his family for many years unless you show him, under his own vine and fig tree as it were, that you have a system better than the system which he himself has been following.”

Working with Georgia senator Michael Hoke Smith, Lever translated his convictions into a bill that would establish a formalized Cooperative Extension Service. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 called for cooperation between the land-grant colleges and the U.S. Department of Agriculture “in order to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects related to agriculture and home economics, and to encourage the application of the same.”

Smith considered the act to be the most important piece of federal legislation he ever sponsored, and Lever described extension services as “the greatest educational work along these particular lines in this or any other generation.”

Clemson has always been proud to be a critical part of the foundation for the nation’s extension services. In addition to Lever, two Clemson graduates B.H. Rawl (1900) and J.H. McClain (1906), both of South Carolina, assisted in drafting the legislation.

The S.C. General Assembly accepted the terms of the Smith-Lever Act in 1915, when it was decided the trustees of Clemson College would receive the funds and organize and conduct the extension work. The national program, calling for an annual expenditure of $4.58 million and authorizing the appointment of two farm demonstration agents in each of the nation’s 2,850 rural counties, was financed equally by federal grants-in-aid and appropriations by the state legislatures.

Lever was laid to rest at Cemetery Hill on April 28, 1940; however, we continue to see the growth and prosperity his dedication to public service has brought not only to Clemson University and the state of South Carolina, but also to the nation as a whole.

Today, the Clemson University Extension Service provides public service across the state in fields such as community development, urban and commercial horticulture, family consumer sciences, livestock, field crops, forestry, insects, wildlife, and youth programs such as 4-H, FFA and the Palmetto Youth Fellowship.

Thomas Green Clemson had a vision of public service when he provided for the establishment of the Clemson University we know today. Frank Lever held fast to the same ideal in working to establish the nation’s extension services.

A.F. Lever typewriter
Thanks to Clemson Special Collections