STATE EXPERIMENT STATION 201 



the long run, the most certain and effectual method of 

 'control.' It has the great advantages over any other 

 system that it is entirely fair, that it so distributes 

 responsibility that the station and its officers cannot 

 enter into the temptation or incur the suspicion of 

 favoritism or partiality; it keeps the producer and 

 dealer constantly alert to hold their wares up to a high 

 standard of excellence; and it exercises the caution 

 and the intelligence of the consumer in a manner that 

 must react favorably on every branch of his business. ' ' 

 Professor Johnson felt that the work had not been 

 rightly begun, and that it had been taken out of the 

 hands of the committee duly appointed for the work 

 by a private individual whose major interest was the 

 success of his agricultural journal. He believed that 

 the station should be an independent organization 

 rather than a subordinate department of an unrelated 

 institution, and that this public work should be done 

 with public funds, the expenditures being approved by 

 state officers, rather than by private donors. 



Appropriations to the experiment station at Mid- 

 dletown were limited to two years. Before the expi- 

 ration of that time the General Assembly provided for 

 the continuation of experimental work by the passage 

 of "an act establishing the Connecticut Agricultural 

 Experiment Station" as an independent State institu- 

 tion "for the purpose of promoting agriculture by 

 scientific investigation and experiment." The defini- 

 tion thus incorporated into the legal existence of the 

 station was the fundamental one for which Professor 

 Johnson from the first had contended that the experi- 

 ment stations of America should aim to lead research 

 in agricultural science in this country. The State 



