ee TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY Report. 
vices that have been rendered by its men, to estimate the immense 
contribution it has made to the knowledge and welfare of the State. 
In more than one great enterprise New York has set high stand- 
ards and has attained unto them; and one of the most prominent 
and successful of these enterprises is its State Experiment Station. 
The State College of Agriculture is proud to join you all in these 
felicitations, and to be glad in the prospect of many more successful 
years. 
If this institution has developed leadership, it must have touched 
and influenced many movements that relate to rural questions. The 
fundamental purpose of any experiment station is to increase the 
productiveness of the land; and yet, at the very time of this cele- 
bration, we are told that the agricultural affairs of New York State 
are in a deplorable condition of decline. We are reminded of the 
census figures showing that in the years between 1880 and 1900 
there was an annual decrease in the value of farm .property of 
seven and one-third millions of dollars and in the value of land 
and its improvements of eight and one-half millions of dollars. We 
are reminded also of statistics indicating that there has been a de- 
crease of twenty per ct. in the rural population. It has been said 
that there are twelve thousand abandoned farms in the State. What 
have this Experiment Station and ‘its sister institutions been doing 
all these years that such conditions should prevail? Are we spend- 
ing hundreds of thousands of dollars with the result that our agri- 
culture is decreasing in its efficiency, even to the point when new 
and Herculean efforts must be made to rescue it? Or is something 
fundamentally wrong with the agriculture of New York State, 
which such institutions as this cannot reach? Or, again, is it barely 
possible that in some way we have misjudged the nature of the so- 
called agricultural decline? If we find an agricultural question, 
what is to be our attitude toward it? Your program announces 
that I am to speak on “ Lessons of To-day:” in these questions I 
think that I discover my subject. 
THE GENERAL SITUATION. 
It may be a question whether the census figures of the different 
years are in all respects comparable. Conditions of money and of 
values are not the same in any two twenty-year periods. In 1880 
we may not yet have passed altogether the inflated values of the 
war period. These census figures are now old and great changes 
may have taken place in the seven or eight years since the more 
