302 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



must follow the routine of more or less elementary instruction in some 

 general science twelve or fifteen hours a week. In the latter case he 

 will be a rare man indeed who is not so wearied by his duties as a 

 teacher that he will not be able to do his best work as an investigator. 

 He may accomplish considerable useful work for the station, but it will 

 probably be of comparatively low grade. A half dozen lectures and 

 quizzes at farmers' institutes in a season may correct the theories of 

 investigators and reveal to them in a new light the real problems of 

 the farmers; but a three months 7 campaign in the lecture field is most 

 likely to seriously diminish the stock of energy which is necessary to 

 solve these problems by experimental inquiry, and seriously interferes 

 with planning and work. An occasional letter or leaflet on some 

 familiar topic to satisfy the earnest desire of the farmer correspondent 

 for live information may refresh our investigators mental powers, but 

 the dull grind of a voluminous correspondence or popular composition 

 will most surely sap his alertness in the pursuit of new truth. 



We can forgive much that is past in the history of our stations 

 because of popular pressure and financial stress, but we believe that 

 unless boards of management and executive officers take a firm stand 

 to protect the investigators against the inroads on their time and 

 energies in other directions which have hitherto been permitted the 

 stations will never measure up to the best which they might easily do, 

 to say nothing of their meeting the requirements of the Federal statute 

 under which their operations are largely conducted. 



One of the greatest of living American educators has recently said: 

 "Anyone who has learned how hard it is to determine a fact, to state 

 it accurately, and to draw from it the justly limited inference, will be 

 sure that he himself can not do these things except in a very limited 

 field. He will know that his own personal activity must be limited to 

 a few subjects if his capacity is to be really excellent in any. He will 

 be sure that the too common belief that a. Yankee can turn his hand to 

 anything is a mischievous delusion. Having as the result of his edu- 

 cation some vision of knowledge and capacity needed in the business 

 of the world, he will respect the trained capacities which he sees devel- 

 oped in great diversity in other people; in short, he will come to respect 

 and confide in the expert in every field of human activity. Confidence 

 in experts and willingness to employ them and abide by their decisions 

 are among the best signs of intelligence in an educated individual or 

 an educated community." 



The American farmer, through the jSTational Congress, has provided 

 himself with the means for employing at least a limited number of first- 

 class experts to aid him in the solution of numerous and difficult prob- 

 lems which forever harass him. Shall he have such experts, or must 

 he be obliged through a practical diversion of the funds for investiga- 

 tion to put up with second-class work and unsatisfactory answers to 

 his inquiries? Thus far he has not received the best which he might 

 have had for his money. 





