EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART I. 23 



THE RETIREMENT OP DIRECTOR SAGE. 



(Wallaces' Farmer.) 



Hon. J. R. Sage has voluntarily retired from the office of director of 

 the Iowa Weather and Crop Service, in which for nearly eighteen years 

 he has rendered distinguished service not merely to the farmers of 

 Iowa but of the whole United States. 



Like most eminently successful men, Mr. Sage has given the public 

 a vast amount of service for which he has not and in the very nature of 

 things could not receive compensation. He has been a student of 

 weather and all that affects it for half a century and more. He has done 

 more than any other man to teach Iowa farmers weather science, to 

 point out to them the plan of the Creator in watering this great plain 

 from the Gulf to Hudson Bay and from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, 

 and has told them all that is certainly known about cyclones and torna- 

 does, the laws of electricity and the relation of timber and rainfall to 

 crop production. He has been a careful and thorough student of agri- 

 cultural problems, and in the faithful discharge of the duties of his 

 office is rounding out a career of distinguished usefulness. 



No man achieves such results without preliminary training, and it 

 may be interesting to know something of the biography of Mr. Sage. 

 His ancestors were among the first settlers of Connecticut in the seven- 

 teenth century. Twenty-one of his relatives were in the revolutionary 

 war. His father settled in the poor, hilly district of Schoharie county, 

 New York, in the center of the anti-rent agitation, which, by the way, 

 was so extensive in that section that it turned the vote of the state 

 of New York over to James K. Polk and defeated Henry Clay. 



Mr. Sage was born on December 27, 1832, during the first term of 

 Andrew Jackson's administration. Located as above described, he 

 graduated from the "school of hard knocks." He was especially fortu- 

 nate in this, however, that there was in those days a magnificent circu- 

 lating library, which, unlike those of today, was made up of solid read- 

 ing; no novels. His father being librarian, he had free access to these 

 books. Among them were the writings of Benjamin Franklin, and it 

 was the inspiration of these that led him first to scientific research. 

 When eighteen he became a school teacher in western New York, and 

 there fell in with Thomas K. Beecher, through whose influence he en- 

 tered the ministry, continuing in it for twenty years and organizing 

 several churches. He entered Company A of the 121st New York Regi- 

 ment as a high private and during a temporary absence was unani- 

 mously elected chaplain. He resigned on account of ill health and 

 went back to preaching. He came to Iowa in 18 69, and while preaching 

 purchased a farm and began his study of agricultural problems. 



While Mr. Sage has voluntarily resigned from the work of the 

 Weather and Crop Service, in accordance with a plan of which he has 

 frequently spoken to us for the last two years, he is not ready for an 

 obituary notice, but is planning to complete some work which he has 

 had in mind for a number of years and with which the duties of his 

 position seriously interfered. 



