No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 403 



of it. If we could get into relations with our Government, and get 

 France to loan us or sell us some of their own horses, there might 

 be something in it, but to have the horses pass through the hands of 

 a sales agent in Belgium or Normandy and then through the hands of 

 another agent here, you know what that means. There is, of course, 

 force in the idea of the Government looking after breeding, not only 

 for horses, but for cattle and for sheep. 



I called day before yesterday with the Assistant Secretary of 

 Agriculture, at State College, and w 7 e looked down from the dome 

 of it over out great Nittany Valley and became enthusiastic over it, 

 and I said, I do not see why you cannot organize a project here in 

 your Nittany Valley that would give us a distinctive breed in this 

 community, and would do more for the dairy interests of Pennsylva- 

 nia by getting the Government, which the Government would do, to 

 put a certain number of bulls into this valley, so that you might 

 breed for milk and for beef, and at the same time you would do more 

 for the dairy interests of Pennsylvania than in any other way. 



I think that the demonstration that has been made in the breed- 

 ing of plants, has done more for the instruction of the farming inter- 

 ests of this country than any other sort of education that we have 

 had. Now this thing of breeding plants and improvement by breed- 

 ing, is comparatively a new thing for us, but it has an educating in- 

 fluence that extends not only to plants but to animals. 



I confess that it was rather new to me that the Government would 

 lend its aid to the development of new breeds of cattle, just as it 

 lends its aid to the breeding of new 7 plants, and improving the va- 

 rieties of plants which we are growing on our farms. I do not know 

 whether you have had any papers on this breeding of plants, but if 

 you have followed the thoughts involved in it, and the progress that 

 has been made, you have found what Iowa has done in the mat- 

 ter of her corn .raising by calling into its service the railroads. 

 Take the great railroad of " Jim " Hill aud see what it has done. 

 He has not only given us a railroad, but has invested money in 

 live stock and in plant culture, and has sent out men who have 

 inculcated plant breeding, sent them out broadcast over the country. 



I think that if some such plan as that was adopted in Pennsylva- 

 nia, illustrating the breeding of coin, if the railroads would take 

 hold of it and send it over their lines, the Pennsylvania and the 

 Lehigh Valley and the Reading; if they would combine, they could 

 reach nearly every part of Pennsylvania, and following the course 

 pursued in Iowa by the railroads there, they would add twenty-five 

 per cent, in five years to the value of our corn crop, because we would 

 grow more and better corn, and grow more of it to the acre, and 

 as a result it would bring more profit, instead of a barely living 

 profit on the best corn that we can raise. 



That is what they have done in Iowa, and the thought there grew 

 in the mind of an old Pennsylvania Dutchman, who moved out there 

 tw T enty-two years ago and bought 28,000 acres of land, and they have 

 got it in that family yet, and the boys who have been educated 

 in Harvard and Yale, have come back to follow their father's occu- 

 pation. They had ideas as well as crops and one of those boys has 

 taken up this great question and from his si inly of it has grown 

 the great plan which has been adopted by their railroads and by 

 their agricultural college for reaching and teaching the farmers all 



