Ri;si;arch on Plant Tumoiis 481 



of At;ri(.ukurc, and as lor our staiuiini; at home one has only to ask any 

 well educated farmer anywhere in this broad country, -in Maine or 

 Missouri; New York or Minnesota; liie Gulf States; the Carolinas or 

 California. 



■^'ou have been a part of all this vast i^rowth. To you, more than to any 

 other one man, all this is due. Your lars;e foresight and wise administration 

 have made it possible. . . .-* 



Before his retirement. Secretary Wilson had recommended to 

 the committee on appropriations of the House of Representatives 

 certain additional monies which, had these been approved by the 

 committee on agriculture, would very considerably have enabled 

 Dr. Smith to extend his laboratories and field investigations in 

 plant pathology. The recommended appropriation had also been 

 approved by Secretary Houston and to secure favorable action 

 thereon Smith in 1914 appeared before the house committee on 

 agriculture."*' 



Introducing himself to the committee members unacquainted 

 with his work, he pointed out that he had been w^ith the Depart- 

 ment for twenty-seven years and during this time 



revolutionized the study of bacterial diseases of plants . . . discovered a 

 new type of fungous diseases of plants (the Fusariums) of wide distribu- 

 tion and great economic importance . . . demonstrated that a wide-spread 

 bacterial tumor on plants (grape vines, roses, peaches, pears and many 

 other cultivated plants) is a genuine cancer in its method of growth and 

 [had] rendered it extremely probable that cancer in man and animals is due 

 to a similar organism. 



For the work on cankers and tumors of plants, he suggested 

 that the Department " might well put an additional $10,000 into 

 this one subject." In the autumn of 1914 the Department had 

 launched a large scale campaign, cooperating with states around 

 the Gulf of Mexico, to eradicate the serious and widely dissemi- 

 nated canker disease of citrus fruit and trees. A scientific paper, 

 prepared on this subject by Miss Clara Hasse of the Department, 

 announcing discovery of the cause to be a bacterium, Bacterium 

 citrj, was more proof the next year of the tremendous economic 

 good realized from investigations in plant pathology and bac- 



-* Typewritten copy of his address found among collected documents and papers ; 

 also, his diary, 1920, p. 239. 



" Statement of Dr. Erwin F. Smith before the House Committee of Agriculture 

 1914, op. cjt. 



