THE BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, ITS FUNCTIONS AND 



EFFICIENCY. 1 



By B. T. Galloway, Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry. 



The Bureau of Plant Industry has entered upon the second decade 

 of its work, and it would therefore seem a fitting time to briefly 

 review its past activities and in the light of lessons learned to in- 

 dicate, so far as lies within our power, some of the directions of its 

 future functions and the basis for the efficiency of these functions. 



Those of us who have been connected with the Government for so 

 long that we refer to length of service by decades rather than years 

 will recall the struggles and difficulties of the earlier periods — strug- 

 gles and difficulties as to the rights and privileges of the scientific 

 worker, struggles and difficulties as to funds and equipment, the 

 rights of property so far as they relate to discoveries, and the rights 

 of the individual so far as they relate to securing to him unhampered 

 opportunities for growth in his chosen field. Our younger men can 

 hardly imagine a condition which carried with it the idea that their 

 entire work was to have no recognition. They can hardly conceive of 

 a state of things that would permit of their scientific discoveries being 

 taken by their superior officers and used as a matter of course, with- 

 out credit of any kind. And yet this was the custom and the practice 

 26 or 27 years ago, just prior to the organization of the State agri- 

 cultural experiment stations in the United States. The passage of 

 the Hatch Act, resulting in the establishment of the State experiment 

 stations, gave the first great impetus to agricultural research in the 

 United States, created an immediate and widespread demand for 

 men, and gave those who desired to see the widest freedom for 

 scientific work an opportunity to put into effect policies completely 

 overturning the old views and the practices followed for so many 

 years. A great many of these questions had been worked out prior to 

 the reorganization of the department, something over 12 years ago, 

 although even at that time there were grave doubts whether any large 

 organization of scientific workers could be developed under our 

 system of Government without danger of more or less autocratic 

 control. We have always had faith that this could be clone, and the 



1 Issued Mar. 15, 1913. 



Presented Feb. 28, 1913, as one of a series of lectures before the scientific, staff of 

 the Bureau of Plant Industry. 

 [Cir. 117] 



