Ill, — 'THE RISE OF SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE 



ciency, record the Sermon on the Mount or the Gettysburg address in 

 terms of laboratory hours? Go to, we are deahng with strange gods at 

 this point. Let us be forgiven and return to the worship of the true 

 Deity which is ready to recognize the individual as the source of all 

 real discovery and which is willing to accredit him with as much of 

 honesty of purpose, and of faithfulness to the public as the political ap- 

 pointee, also an hireling. Above all let us not set up to rule over us 

 machinery that is manned by those individuals who could not themselves 

 do the work they attempt to supervise. And above all I protest against 

 the present temper of the public mind which has been tampered with 

 by professional exploiters until it is unwilling to trust its business in the 

 hands of boards or other deliberative bodies even when composed of 

 reputable citizens busy for the most part about their own affairs, but 

 overrules their judgment by exalting individuals who have no occupa- 

 tion of their own but whose profession it is to multiply and to fill ad- 

 ministrative positions, that render no service but that hinder mightily 

 the progress of the true scientist whose one occupation is research. 



Here have come together the working scientist and the professional 

 officeholder. They face in opposite directions. At present the office man 

 has the upper hand. He assumes the r(51e of critic and the public has 

 accorded him all he asks. The time will come, however, and may it not 

 be long delayed, when the scientist will again come into his own and the 

 institution to which he belongs will recognize no overlord, except the 

 auditor, who will be an auditor, not an autocrat in technical science. 



So thoroughly has chemistry taken the lead as a science fundamental 

 to all improvement in agriculture that the terms are sometime^ used 

 synonymously. However, the outlook for the development of other sci- 

 ences in their relation to agriculture is extremely suggestive. Physics, for 

 example, has never consciously served farming. I know of but two gradu- 

 ate students in agriculture who have specialized in physics, and it was 

 the experience of both that physicists were somewhat surprised to learn 

 that their science could be of the slightest use in agriculture, whereas 

 the facts are, it is of fundamental importance at many points. 



Both botany and zoology possess undeveloped opportunities little 

 dreamed of. They have in the past served agriculture mainly in the field 

 of genetics or of animal and plant diseases. We are only beginning to 

 study crop production from the standpoint of the physiology of the 

 plant, its sensitive periods and the conditions essential to successful 

 growth. 



As a whole we have only scratched the surface of science in its rela- 

 tion to the practise of farming. The outlook is nothing short of a pan- 

 orama to him who has an adequate vision of the future and the ability to 

 work in any one of the great fields of science, distinguishing clearly be- 

 tween science per se and its application to the arts of man. 



[2. A Foliticiaifs View. Even as the Department of Agriculture 

 proved itself as a research organization, it ran up against two major 

 problems which were insoluble in the chemical laboratory. The first 

 problem, which was reaching crisis proportions by 1915, was how to get 



[45] 



