136 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



our best colleges and universities. Despite the dangers from 

 academic dogmatism, it is in such surroundings that we now 

 generally find the most critical and impartial judgments and 

 the most careful deliberation in the formulation of conclusions. 



The conditions essential to effective inquiry have been briefly 

 outlined at this time in order that they may be compared with 

 those under which agricultural research is undertaken in the 

 United States. But before such a comparison is made, I would 

 like to meet one thought that I suspect is already in your minds 

 concerning what has been said. Doubtless your mental comment 

 is that the specifications laid down are ideal and at present are 

 unattainable by the institutions here represented. If this be 

 true, then so much the worse for the prospects of scientific prog- 

 ress among us. When the temperature necessary for the hatch- 

 ing of eggs in an incubator is unattainable in a given instance, 

 why, the eggs will not hatch. But I do not concede that there 

 is anything extreme or impracticable in these specifications. 

 They have existed, and they exist now, in some places and it is 

 only where they are found that research is in its best estate. 



In considering the present status of agricultural inquiry in 

 the United States, we are impressed first of all by the great 

 magnitude of the effort that, according to the language of the 

 laws authorizing it, is known under a variety of terms such as 

 "scientific investigation and experiment," "original researches," 

 "diffusion of useful information," and similar phraseology. 

 In 1906 the experiment stations expended nearly two million 

 dollars. Assuming that of the seven million dollars appropriated 

 to the United States Department of Agriculture, 60 per cent, was 

 assigned to those bureaus engaged in the work of inquiry and 

 demonstration, we find that in 1 905-6/) ver six millions of dollars 

 was applied by the federal and state governments to the pro- 

 motion of agricultural science. This is outside the funds used 

 by the land-grant colleges in the work of instruction. The 

 number of persons now employed in the expenditure of this vast 



