With this hasty summary of facts, which are entirely famiHar to the 

 members of this Association, we may proceed at once to a considera- 

 tion of the activities of these institutions and the work they have 

 accompHshed. These can be best understood, and any needed read- 

 justments more clearly seen, in the light of the conditions which have 

 so far prevailed. 



Two main facts should be considered in this connection, namely, 

 that this new effort of education and research was founded on an 

 extensive scale among a people largely unprepared to maintain it effi- 

 ciently, and that the agencies which have been established have de- 

 veloped materially with great rapidity. When the colleges of agricul- 

 ture and the mechanic arts began their work late in the sixties, about 

 the only men in this country with adequate preparation for teaching the 

 sciences in their application to agriculture were the few who had sought 

 the advantages of European study. For the succeeding twenty years, 

 these institutions were largely dominated by the view that in order to 

 secure popular approval their chief function should be to educate men to 

 to be farmers, and on this account as well as for financial reasons, they 

 offered scanty opportunities for advanced study. The inevitable result 

 was that when the experiment stations were established only here and 

 there had men developed genius and training for the work of 'nquiry, 

 combined with an interest in agricultural problems. Notwithstanding 

 these limitations, the growth of agencies designed wholly or in part for 

 research has been remarkably rapid, though at no time has it kept pace 

 with the demands of the agricultural people for scientific aid. It is not 

 too much to say that even in the last decade millions of dollars have been 

 added to our resources for the promotion of science in its relation to agri- 

 culture, and hundreds, almost thousands, of men, have been called into a 

 field of service where they are expected to add to the sum of agricult- 

 ural knowledge. Associated with the growth of institutional facili- 

 ties for agricultural education and research there has also come into 

 existence an extensive and laborious effort for the spread of knowledge 

 among the rural people, to which all agricultural agencies have sus- 

 tained an intimate relation. 



As is evident from the facts given, the past two decades, particularly 

 the last one, may be fitly characterized as peculiarly a period of the 

 promotion of the organization and material resources necessary to 

 agricultural education and research. A few decades ago the majority 

 of agricultural sentiment was indifferent or adverse to what was 

 termed "book farming." This attitude has been reversed. Those 

 familiar with the history of agricultural colleges and experiment sta- 

 tions and of the Department of Agriculture during this period are well 



