BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, ITS FUNCTIONS AND EFFICIENCY. 9 



an agricultural college or this department that the people may 

 unintentionally be misled into believing that immediate results are 

 to be expected from certain types of propaganda work. Already we 

 are meeting signs of impatience on the part of some of these agencies 

 that have indicated a desire to cooperate with us. They are not 

 getting as prompt results as they had anticipated. Their previous 

 training had led them to the conviction that the expenditure of money 

 in certain directions would bring immediate results, as it nearly 

 always does in connection with measurable matters, such as the con- 

 struction of a railroad, the building of a creamery, or work of that 

 kind. Progress in agriculture is difficult to measure. In fact, it 

 has been the fashion of some of our friends who deal with statistics 

 to call attention to the apparent lack of increase in the average 

 production of the various crops in this country. It has also been the 

 fashion for these same friends to point to the average low yields 

 and the individual high yields secured by certain men as illustrative 

 of what might be accomplished if the general average could be raised 

 ever so little. As a matter of fact, when we come to study carefully 

 the tendency of crop yields in this country they appear to be on the 

 increase. Our Bureau of Statistics has pointed out the fact that 

 there was a tendency toward lower yields during the seventies and 

 eighties, but during the last 20 years the tendency has been the re- 

 verse; that is, although the yield per acre has varied widely from year 

 to vear, owing to the vicissitudes of the seasons, nevertheless when 

 the averages of a number of years are grouped together there appears 

 a gradual tendency upward in the average yield per acre. This aver- 

 age upward tendency is very, very slow and very, very small, all of 

 which shows how important it is to proceed very cautiously in the 

 matter of propaganda work and not lead the farmers to believe that 

 revolutions in crop production are to be accomplished in a year or 

 in a decade. Whether many of the agencies that are now so actively 

 showing interest in the farmers' work will be content with this ap- 

 parently slow increase remains to be seen. Anyway, the fact remains 

 that we should proceed along our chosen lines with due caution and 

 not permit ourselves to be stampeded by the hurry and rush for 

 immediate results. 



We have now discussed in general terms what would appear to be 

 some of the principal functions of the Bureau of Plant Industry and 

 have indicated the relationships that must be maintained between our 

 own and other Government organizations, as well as those that must 

 be maintained between ourselves and the States. We may then 

 properly pass to the second phase of our subject, viz, the efficiency of 

 our organization and the basis upon which efficiency must rest. It 

 may be well to add parenthetically at this point that we are discuss- 

 81677°— Cir. 117—13 2 



