OUR AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 353 



gives the most practical final result. As a rule, the older stations 

 also have the most experienced and best-known agricultural sci- 

 entists in their employ ; but this is not always the case. With the 

 large increase in the number of experiment stations which took 

 place in 1887-88 came a corresponding demand for the services of 

 these experienced men, and several accepted more lucrative posi- 

 tions than they had previously held. 



The demand for experienced men was, however, far in excess of 

 the supply. From seventeen the number of experiment stations 

 suddenly increased to fifty, with nothing like a proportional in- 

 crease in men who were capable at the outset of filling the places 

 to which they were appointed. At first, many places were un- 

 doubtedly filled by popular favorites, appointed to their positions 

 through the influence of farmers' organizations or for wholly local 

 reasons. Some of these have proved worthy of the trust and by 

 hard study and work are building up their departments and them- 

 selves. 



But the lack of suitable men has not been the only drawback 

 to the work of the younger stations. Two clauses in the act 

 passed by Congress allowing only three thousand dollars of the 

 first and seven hundred and fifty dollars of each succeeding appro- 

 priation to be used for buildings and requiring that from the very 

 first at least four bulletins a year be issued, while ultimately it 

 may prove of advantage to them, has certainly tended at first to 

 bring them no praise. It was supposed that the States would 

 furnish buildings, but unfortunately some of them furnished either 

 inadequate ones or none at all, and in one or two instances even 

 the annual appropriation which the State had previously given to 

 the agricultural college was abolished. The fact that quarterly 

 bulletins were required by law, whether the station had valuable 

 matter on hand or not, coupled with the fact that in many instances 

 men wholly new to the business had to write them, tended at first 

 to distribute more or less matter of questionable value. As the 

 bulletins have general circulation among the class for which they 

 were intended only in the State in which they were issued, many 

 States necessarily sent out some compilations on the same topics 

 which, to all practical purposes, were duplicates of each other. 

 Bulletins, too, had to be written in popular style, in order that they 

 might be understood by men whose education, in too many in- 

 stances, had been limited to the winter district school. If it be 

 also remembered that these newly formed stations have been 

 organized scarcely three years and have not been in working order 

 for that length of time ; that they are going through the same 

 trials as the older stations have had ; that they have to break down 

 the prejudices of many farmers, as the older stations have largely 

 done ; and that they were popularly expected to show in a few 



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