EDITORIAL. 403 



The tide is running strongl}^ toward a more compact organization 

 and a greater unification of the work. On the whole those stations 

 which have a strong organization and administration are meeting with 

 the largest measure of success. 



Observation leads to the belief that a widespread differentiation of 

 the investigator from the teacher is gradually taking place. A certain 

 number of men are more and more devoting themselves to the work of 

 investigation and succeeding in it. Others are just as certainly losing 

 their interest and activity in such work. In this as in every other 

 walk of life the personal bent and natural fitness of the man manifests 

 itself as an important element of succ^ess which should be reckoned 

 with by those having the administration of our colleges and stations. 

 This differentiation of the investigator from the teacher is not prevented, 

 though it may be hindered, b}^ the double duty which is required of 

 many station and college men, but there is little doubt that in a large 

 majorit}' of cases the requirement of so large an amount of elementary 

 instruction from men who have been appointed upon the station staffs, 

 presumabljr by reason of their training and fitness for agricultural 

 investigation, is an arrangement which has little if anything but expe- 

 diency to commend it. From the point of view of the station this 

 expediency is exceedingly doubtful. As Dr. elordan very truly said in 

 his paper at the last convention of the Association of American Agricul- 

 tural Colleges and Experiment Stations, '"The interests of our stations 

 and, above all, the interests of our agriculture demand that the director 

 and leading members of the staff' shall be, first of all, workers for the 

 station, and shall give to its proper activities their highest thought and 

 their best energies. ... It is entirely out of the question for our 

 college professors to be tied to the insistent daily duties of instructing 

 students and at the same time maintain the close, well-informed, and 

 broadly helpful relation to the needs and conditions of agricultural 

 practice. The experiment station, with an annual income second to no 

 other department in most colleges, should not be in any sense an 

 appendix to class-room instruction, nor was it ever intended that this 

 should be the case. It should have a strong, well-defined, and inde- 

 pendent individuality." 



Because a man is required to teach many hours he does not thereby 

 become a successful teacher. The research which he is compelled by 

 pressure of college work to carrj^ on during- vacations and at night 

 may nevertheless be his real mission. It will be well if boards and 

 presidents will consider more fully the actual state of things, and make, 

 as far as possible, such a readjustment that the investigator will be 

 left very largely to investigate and the teacher to teach. 



