454 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



had learned to the oat crop. He set to work to improve those oats by im- 

 proving the seed, and in a few years lie had raised the average yield of 

 forty-five to seventy-eight bushels on the same land, and in that section 

 that young man justified higher education in agriculture. 



I recall another who went back to his farm where there was a dairy 

 herd which had not been a very profitable enterprise, and he set about 

 improving these animals by better breeding, better selection, and finding 

 a better market for the product, and the result was, in spite of the ad- 

 vice of those who thought they knew better than he, that he succeeded 

 not only in doubling but trebling the milk yield of these cows. And so 

 he justified what he learned in college. 



Then only a few days ago I had the pleasure of meeting another who 

 had studied, among other subjects in his course, agricultural chemistry, 

 and he went into a section where there was a great expanse of waste 

 land. It never had been good for anything, and the people said it never 

 would be good for anything. But with his skill he discovered that this 

 waste land contained an excessively large amount of a certain constituent 

 which was due to its volcanic origin and that constituent, manganese, 

 had thrown the soil solution out of balance, and the question was how it 

 could be adjusted. After making a number of experiments on the soil, 

 he found that by adding to the land four hundred pounds of a cer- 

 tain combination of artificial fertilizer which had never been used be- 

 fore, he was able to make the land just as productive as any fertile land 

 in that section. And today as a result of that application of his knowl- 

 edge there is thrown into use in that section ten thousand acres of ad- 

 ditional land, and so he in his district has justified higher education in 

 agriculture. 



At this time the entire public is greatly interested in developing agri- 

 cultural education. We hear of bankers' associations, commercial bodies, 

 railroads and others, taking up the question, and we say, of course, they 

 are interested in the increasing of agricultural crops because an increase 

 of the crops means an increase of their profits, and I think that is a 

 creditable interest, but I believe that the chief interest actuating these 

 men is the increasing cost of living, and the fact that they are large em- 

 ployers of labor, and they wish to avoid having their laborers coming to 

 them repeatedly year after year for more and more wages, based on the 

 ground of the increasing cost of living. Who would have thought that 

 the public would come to that point of view a few years ago, yet today 

 they believe in supporting agricultural education, and they are proving 

 their belief by their acts in making appropriations for its support. 



I believe that in Iowa, if any state, the people who live on the farms, 

 and who are interested in farming, are familiar with the different activi- 

 ties of the agricultural college, and I will not tire you by reviewing 

 them, but I wish to refer to just one of the new departures which I 

 think promises great things, not only for this state but for other states, 

 where it is being introduced. I refer to the plan of having in different 

 counties experts permanently stationed for the purpose of giving advice 

 upon the problems in those counties. In co-operation with the federal 

 department of agriculture, your college of agriculture at Ames will soon 



