1919] EDITORIAL. , 607 



are required for success in that field. Several declare that the pres- 

 ent salaries are no longer adequate for retaining men capable of 

 carrying on high grade research, or attracting the best type of men 

 to it. Comparison shows that the entrance salary and the prospects 

 of advance are more attractive in extension than in research, and 

 that the maximum to which workers may ultimately look forward is 

 practically the same in the two lines. 



The effect of these conditions is to discourage promising students 

 from undergoing the special training to prepare themselves for re- 

 search, and the testimony is that relatively few are looking to that 

 field. The feeling is abroad that the inducements for a research 

 career are relatively less attractive than five years ago, and are grow- 

 ing less so from the standpoint of young students. Little apparently 

 is being done by the colleges to counteract this condition, which indi- 

 cates that severe as the situation has become, the chief cause of alarm 

 lies in the future. The committee warned that " until institutions 

 frankly acknowledge the high quality of research as placing it at 

 the pinnacle of scientific effort in agriculture, and express this in the 

 salary that may be attained irrespective of any general scale, it is 

 quite evident that the supply of persons trained for station work as 

 a career will not be sufficient to meet its requirements and allay con- 

 stant apprehension for the future." 



The committee made two suggestions bearing on this matter. It 

 advocated a larger provision of scholarships or research fellowships 

 to make the approach more favorable for students desiring to pre- 

 pare for agricultural research. These would afford an incentive and 

 an opportunity which are now often closed to such students of 

 promise, and would thus aid in building up the supply of men of 

 rigid training and broad vision such as the stations require. And to 

 enlarge the outlook in that field and recognize its relative high stand- 

 ing, it was suggested that the colleges establish a limited number of 

 research professorships, to be open to investigators in the stations 

 who have displayed marked ability and become entitled to special 

 recognition. Such positions would stimulate interest in research as 

 a career, and prove an added inducement to those of eminence to re- 

 main in that field rather than go over into administrative or com- 

 merical positions. 



That the funds at present available for the experiment stations are 

 wholly inadequate, and that these institutions have been left behind 

 in the forward development of other branches of the agricultural 

 work, was further emphasized in the discussion before the station 

 section. 



Dean Curtiss expressed the belief that there has not been a time 

 within the past quarter of a century when our research work in 

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