512 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



been accomplished by the growth of what is broadly designated as agri- 

 cultural science. This has been developed with remarkable rapidity 

 during the last quarter of a century, and the benefit to agriculture has 

 been great. As was inevitable, there was much error and much repeti- 

 tion of work in the early application of money to the needs of agricul- 

 tural colleges and experiment stations alike by the nation and the 

 several states. Much has been accomplished; but much more can be 

 accomplished in the future. The prime need must always be for real 

 research, resulting in scientific conclusions of proved soundness. Both 

 the farmer and the legislature must beware of invariably demanding 

 immediate returns from investments in research efforts. It is probably 

 one of our faults as a nation that we are too impatient to wait a suflB- 

 cient length of time to accomplish the best results; and in agriculture 

 effective research often, although not always, involves slow and long- 

 continued effort if the results are to be trustworthy. While applied 

 science in agriculture as elsewhere must be judged largely from the 

 standpoint of its actual return in dollars, yet the farmers no more than 

 anyone else can afford to ignore the large results that can be enjoyed 

 because of broader knowledge. The farmer must prepare for using the 

 knowledge that can be obtained through agricultural colleges by Insist- 

 ing upon a constantly more practical curriculum in the schools in which 

 his children are taught. He must not lose his independence, his ini- 

 tiative, his rugged self-sufficiency; and yet he must learn to work in the 

 heartiest co-operation with his fellows. 



EDUCATIONAL AND RESEARCH WORK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICTXLTTJRE. 



The corner stones of our unexampled prosperity are, on the one hand, 

 the production of raw material, and its manufacture and distribution on 

 the other. These two great groups of subjects are reprsented in the na- 

 tional government principally by the departments of agriculture and of 

 commerce and labor. The production of raw material from the surface 

 of the earth is the sphere in which the department of agriculture has 

 hitherto achieved such notable results. Of all the executive departments 

 there is no other, not even the postoffice, which comes into more direct 

 and beneficient contact with the daily life of the people than the depart- 

 ment of agriculture, and none whose yield of practical benefits is greater 

 in proportion to the public money expended. 



But great as its services have been in the past, the department of 

 agriculture has a still larger field of usefulness ahead. It has been deal- 

 ing with growing crops. It must hereafter deal also with living men. 

 Hitherto agricultural research, instruction and agitation have been di- 

 rected almost exclusively toward the production of wealth from the soil. 

 It is time to adopt in addition a new point of view. Hereafter another 

 great task before the national department of agriculture and the similar 

 agencies of the various states must be to foster agriculture for its social 

 results, or, in other words, to assist in bringing about the best kind of 

 life on the farm for the sake of producing the best kind of men. The 

 government must recognize the far-reaching importance of the study and 

 treatment of the problems of farm life alike from the social and the 



