Ill, 'THE RISE OF SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE 



. . . The establishment of Agricultural Laboratories is the great 

 desideratum for any successful initial step towards material improve- 

 ments in the state of our agriculture. Single, solitary investigations of 

 soil and ashes, and subsequent devices to turn them to account, will 

 benefit locally or individually, and should be more frequently resorted 

 to than heretofore; but the whole object, the national aim, cannot be at- 

 tained by this means. To accomplish that desirable and great end, a per- 

 fect chemical survey is wanting. 



If but a single series of such investigations would be undertaken on 

 the part of the Federal or a State Government, we do not for one mo- 

 ment doubt but that its results would be looked at with astonishment, 

 and hailed with delight by either legislators, statesmen, and practical 

 agriculturists. 



B. 

 THE DEPARTMENT IN 1882 



Cin the first twenty years of its existence (1862 to 1882), the De- 

 partment of Agriculture struggled along modestly, convincing few^ that it 

 had much to offer the American farmer. Tw o issues especially w ere still 

 undecided. The first was whether or not that part of the Federal govern- 

 ment closely associated with party politics could be trusted to administer 

 an agricultural research program which could command the respect of 

 scientists in general. The second issue was how to organize the Depart- 

 ment. For the first two decades, the Department had general-purpose 

 divisions which corresponded roughly to academic disciplines in the uni- 

 versities w hich were developing largely as a result of the stimulus of the 

 Morrill Land Grant Act. The following review of a biennial report of 

 the Commissioner of Agriculture renders a negative judgment on both 

 of these issues. Note that it appeared in a new journal founded as a 

 spokesman for the university scientists. ("The Government Agricultural 

 Report," Science, I [1883], 142-43.) Is it always true that science appUed 

 to technology yields answers which are worth the effort?] 



Inasmuch as the present commissioner, when he entered upon his 

 duties, "found the work for the season, both regular and special, elabo- 

 rately laid out by my [his] successor," his report not unnaturally bears 

 a strong resemblance to the reports of preceding years. It contains the 

 usual reports of the entomologist, the superintendent of grounds, the 

 botanist, the chemist, and the statistician, besides special reports relating 

 to the diseases of animals and to the boring of artesian wells on the arid 

 lands of the west. The tone and matter of the special reports and of the 

 reports of special character compare so favorably w ith most of those of 

 the old-style 'regulars,' that the thought suggests itself, that a much 

 larger proportion of the work of the department than has hitherto been 

 customary could best be done by special commissioners outside of Wash- 

 ington and far away from its influences. From the very nature of the 



[33] 



