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men have been nnnhle. by force of oirenmstances, to keep out of that field. I 

 suspect; for I supi)osc that yuu all have the same experience that I have, that 

 every known pn>i»lem and (luestion under the sun comes up to the station in the 

 form of corresi>ondence. I had a young man write me the other day not long 

 ago saying. " I have purchased a farm " — and whether he had married a wife 

 he did not say ; I hope he had if he was a good man — " and I wish you would 

 tell me the most profitable method of managing that farm; in other words, the 

 crops I can raise, and the method of managing it that would give me the most 

 money." A physician, who wished to expend some of his money made in prac- 

 ticing as a physician in playing with a farm, wrote saying that he had a farm 

 in a certain portion of the State, equipped in a certain way. with so nuich 

 stock and so many trees and so many hogs, and this. that, and the other, and 

 that the farm was laid out in this, that, and the other way. " Now." he said, 

 " I propose to make a certain amount of cider, and do a certain amount in dairy- 

 ing, and in certain other lines ;" and he made a table in which he tabulated the 

 lines of work which he would carry on ; and on one side he wished me to put 

 down what it would cost him to do that work, and on the other side what he 

 would get out of it. 



Now, with that sort of thing coming up to us and an expectant and anxiims 

 public, we may be pardoned. I suspect, if we overstep sometimes the proper 

 lines of experiment-station work ; but I believe we ought, because of the great 

 problems that are pressing up against us. because of the limitations we all feel 

 when we go before the public, because we know that our ignorance is a natural 

 handicap to us in attempting to provide for the farmers — I believe we ought, 

 to the very last degree of safety — to withhold the work of the station to inves- 

 tigating facts and showing that applicability, and leaving (he extension work — 

 what our friend Corbett would call the demonstration work — to the extension 

 work of the university and the college. That is my policy, and I am going to 

 hold to it as strongly as possible and leave to Cornell, possibly at the expense 

 of the popularity of the Geneva institution, the extension work. 



C. D. Smith. I want to call attention to one danger in this extension work, 

 too, and that is this : We did a good thing for a township down near Detroit. 

 But go to, now ! Every other township in that section of the State insisted 

 that the next year we should come over in their section and do likewise. And 

 up in "The Thumb" of Michigan the station is now unpopular, because we do 

 not come up there and buy a farm and make demonstration experiments. For 

 that reason I agree with Director Jordan in regard to the colleges and insist 

 that no money of the funds appropriated for the work of the station shall be 

 used in the demonstration work. But the trouble with us, connected with the 

 colleges, is that although we draw but one salary, we are expected to perform 

 various functions, and our division ceases to be as clear as it ought to be. per- 

 haps, because of the fact that we have to do two classes of work, being supplied 

 with two different funds. But there is this danger, of unpopularity growing out 

 of this work as well as popularity. 



C. E. Thorne. I wish to make it plain that we regaixl our three or four test 

 farms as adjuncts to our resources for scientific investigation and not as dem- 

 onstration farms, but that this work which is being extended over the State 

 through our department of cooperative experiments is in no sense scientific 

 investigation, but that it is carrying to the townships a demonstration of the 

 results of work which has been worked out at the main station or at these test 

 farms. I would not know how to organize a demonstration of the effect of the 

 use of fertilizers of two different compositions on a soil — or of one composition — • 

 if I did not lay off alongside of the tract which was to be treated with this 



21336— No. 164—06 m 12 



