1920] EDITORIAL. 3 



live stock, and orchards, are concerned, are provided and main- 

 tained by the stations out of their various funds, witli little aid from 

 the colleges. These conditions in the aggregate serve to considerably 

 reduce the total budget under this head for experimental work. 



The fees derived from inspection activities of various kinds have 

 grown less rapidly than in the earlier years of the stations, due par- 

 tially to the provision for these expenses in the State appropriations. 

 Only eight stations report fees for such work, the total from that 

 source being under $400,000, fully two-thirds of which is received by 

 two stations; but in numerous other cases, as mentioned above, the 

 expenses of inspection are included in State appropriations or 

 college allotments. Despite the tendency to assign such legal en- 

 forcements to State boards or departments of agriculture, inspection 

 work still constitutes quite a feature of the station activities and 

 accounts for considerable of the direct or indirect funds included 

 in the total of seven millions. As the cost of the service comes out 

 of this revenue, these inspection fees contribute but slightly to the 

 revenues for experiment and investigation, the aggregate probably 

 being fully offset by the amount for control work included in other 

 cases in the direct State appropriation. 



The sales fund has quite naturally increased .in recent years by 

 reason of the high prices of products and the larger areas involved. 

 It usually includes the revenues from substations and from farms 

 used in experiment, together with some tracts which at present are 

 chiefly commercial. In the case of some sixteen stations, the amount 

 reported covers the entire college farm rather than the portion or 

 features devoted to investigation; and in several other instances it 

 includes the revenues from farms which have been given to the 

 institution and turned over to the station for management, largely 

 as commercial ventures at present. 



The growth of the sales fund has been quite steady for many 

 years. In the fiscal year 1894 the amount returned from this source 

 was only $47,300 ; by 1900 it had nearly doubled, and in 1906, when 

 the Adams fund came, it was over $135,000. From that time it 

 increased rapidly, doubling in the next four years, amounting to 

 $307,000 in 1914, to a half million in 1915-16, and close to seven 

 hundred thousand in 1917. In 1918 it was over nine hundred thou- 

 sand, and in 1919 upwards of a millon four hundred thousand dol- 

 lars. In several cases the amount is very large, ranging from $50,000 

 to $180,000 or over ; in one case it is given as nearly $186,000. 



With the possible exception of the past two or three years, the 

 increasing size of the returns from sales implies a larger scale of 

 operations involving land, live stock, and farm products. In- 

 cidentally it serves to effectually acquit the stations of any possible 

 charge that they are conducting their w^ork increasingly on a 



