312 EEPOET OF OFFICE OF EXPEEIMENT STATIONS. 



from the college community, the town of Ames, and other parts of 

 Iowa, as well as by the members of the graduate school. An address 

 of welcome was made by Dean C. F. Curtiss on behalf of the Iowa 

 State college. President W. O. Thompson, of Ohio State University, 

 chairman of the executive committee of the Association of American 

 Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, responded on behalf 

 of the association, giving an interesting account of the inception of 

 tlie school and urging the importance of maintaining it on a high 

 plane. 



Dr. H. P. Armsby, of Pennsylvania State college, chairman of the 

 committee on graduate study, discussed the need and importance of 

 systematic graduate study as a part of the preparation of teachers 

 and investigators in agriculture, and pointed out that the trae mission 

 of this national graduate school of agriculture was to stimulate our 

 college and station workers to seek a broader and deeper training and 

 to lead the way for the establishment of regular graduate courses in 

 agriculture in our best agricultural colleges. He also urged that 

 these colleges should lay great stress on the preparation of teachers 

 and investigators, since they must be the chief source from which 

 these workers on behalf of agricultural progress would come. 



Dean True, of the graduate school, gave a brief history of the enter- 

 prise, and stated that among the more specific aims of the school are 

 the following : 



(1) To stimulate more thorougli study in the several branches of agricultural science. 



(2) To promote more systematic attention to problems of agricultural education. 



(3) To emphasize the vital importance to agricultural progress of the honest and rigid 

 ascertainment of facts and the discovery of underlying principles. 



(4) To aid the establishment on a sound basis of the profession of agricultural science 

 and teaching and the formulation of a satisfactory code of ethics for this profession. 



(5) To bring students and teachers of agricultural science in the several States and in 

 different countries into closer touch and sympathy. 



(6) To bring workers in the so-called fields of pure and applied science into closer 

 and more helpful relations. 



(7) To promote the more efficient and economical use of public and private funds 

 devoted to agricultural education and research, by holding up the fimdamental import- 

 ance of thorough training and the right spirit in the teacher and investigator and 

 denouncing the substitution of political and personal motives in the management and 

 work of our agricultural institutions, for the love of truth and devotion to public 

 interests. 



He also pointed out the great expansion of agricultural education 

 and research in this country and the consequent increase in the open- 

 ings for well-trained men in our agricultural institutions. 



But most significant is the broadening of the field of activity of agricultural experts 

 and the realization by our agricultural leaders and institutions that a truly progressive 

 and permanently prosperous agriculture can only be reached through the quickening 

 of the social and moral impulsesof country people, as well as their intellectual faculties, 

 and through the generai improvement of the conditions of country life. 



