UNCLE SAM'S BIG COLLEGE 313 



one of the gravest dangers of the growing organism. 

 Agriculture is a growing organism. It is likely to be 

 overfed until it becomes over-fat, in which condition 

 it will naturally lapse into a condition of lethargy, 

 inactivity and decay. Just as our colleges and univer- 

 sities and foundations of different kinds are becoming 

 over-endowed, just so agriculture is in danger of pam- 

 pering and coddling. We may well pause on the thresh- 

 old before entering upon an era of agricultural myxe- 

 dema. 



I would be the last one to oppose any necessary agri- 

 cultural endowment. I have seen, however, during my 

 career in the public service, such a wanton waste of 

 money, due to huge gifts for this and that purpose, as 

 to make me skeptical of the wisdom of such enormous 

 grants. Already the Department of Agriculture is ex- 

 pending twenty million dollars a year, which is more 

 than ten times as much as it was spending when I first 

 became attached to it in 1883. Within a year or two, 

 at the present rate, the expenditures will amount to 

 twenty-five millions of dollars, and unless some check 

 is placed upon these extravagant appropriations an- 

 other twenty years will see forty millions of dollars 

 appropriated to the federal Department of Agricul- 

 ture. 



The growth of the Department has been truly phe- 

 nomenal, especially from the time of Hon. Norman J. 

 Coleman the first Secretary of Agriculture and during 

 the incumbency of the Hon. James Wilson, who was 

 Secretary for sixteen years. 



Healthy growth can come only from strenuous effort, 

 and the man who sits at a table bountifully spread, who 

 goes thence to digestion in a Morris chair, and then 

 retires in the soft draperies of a luxurious couch, is 



