APPENDIX. 159 



TRANSITION IN AGRICULTURE. 



Read at the Northwest Fruitgrowers' Convention— E. L. Smith, Hood River. 



Qualification is the watchword of the hour. The horizon of human in- 

 telligence has wonderfully expanded during the last half hour of the cen- 

 tury now drawing to a close. The Magi of the Orient who interpreted 

 dreams, read the stai\s, or sought the alchemy that would transmute the 

 the baser metals to gold sink into insignificance when contrasted with the 

 wise men of the West who invoked the hidden forces of nature to perform 

 the service of man. With Bessemer converting iron to steel, a metal of 

 infinitely greater utility than gold: with Edison, the wizzard of Menlo 

 Park, exploring electrical science : with Roentgen sending his cross rays 

 through the human anatomy or wall of iron and revealing their secrets: 

 with Marconi and his wireless telegraphy, or with Fessenden, who astounds 

 us with the intimation that our thoughts can be volted across the broad 

 Atlantic, the only conductor the blue ether of the heavens. 



Agriculture, and when I speak of agriculture, I include horticulture and 

 t>very branch of industry related to the soil, has shared in the wonderful 

 development that has come to all the industrial arts during the past fifty 

 years. The hand sickle and the cradle of our boyhood days have been fol- 

 lowed by the reaper, the header, the self-binder, and finally by the combined 

 machine, drawn by a multitude of horses, cutting, thrashing, and sacking 

 forty acres in a single day. The music of the flail sounding on the old barn 

 lloor is no longer heard, but instead the roar of great machines with thirty- 

 two, thirty-eight, or forty-inch cylinders, propelled by steam and belching 

 out rivers of straw and golden grain. 



And who shall number the varieties, of surpassing excellence, that the 

 horticulturist has given to the world during the past fifty years, but we 

 tarry only to point to a Burbank creating new species of fruit, of color and 

 flavor, to suit his pleasure, to the astonishment and the delight of all 

 pomologists. 



And what a prime factor is transportation in the evolution of this great 

 industry. The steel rail intersects all our fertile areas, to bear away the 

 products of orchard and field, and great transports, styled whaleback, with 

 a capacity up to a quarter of a million bushels of grain, go down the great 

 lakes to Cleveland and Bufl:'alo, to immense elevators, that snatch up their 

 <;argoes and distribute them to the bread-eaters of the world. Wonderful 

 indeed has been the development of the mechanical appliances of agricul- 

 ture, and in this respect but little seems lacking. I approach now to the 

 more important part of my message. In this age of transition and of high 

 intelligent standards, let us inquire as to what has been done and what we 

 propose to do for the education of the man in partnership with soil. 



AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 



The general government seemed tardy in recognition of the importance 

 of this subject, for it was not until 1855 that the first agricultural college was 

 established, at Cleveland, Ohio ; the second in 1857, at Lansing, Michigan. 



In 1862 the Department of Agriculture was placed in charge of a com- 

 missioner at Washington, and in the same year congress appropriated to the 

 several states an amount of public lands equal to thirty thousand acres for 

 each senator and representative, the proceeds of sales to constitute a per- 



