THE NEW EARTH 



had been carried on for several years previous 

 to this in similar lines, in some of the states. 

 The national recognition carried with it an 

 appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars a year 

 for each station for maintenance. This amount 

 some of the various states quickly began sup- 

 plementing, as the importance of the stations 

 in their bearing upon agriculture became ap- 

 parent. Lands and buildings were, in many 

 instances, allotted by the states for furtherance 

 of the work. The annual amount appropriated 

 by the national and state governments is one 

 million, five hundred thousand dollars, equiva- 

 lent to only about fifty cents per inhabitant 

 per year. The return on the investment, to 

 put it merely upon utilitarian grounds, is quite 

 beyond all ordinary percentages, so enormously 

 are the stations adding to the wealth of the 

 states. In a single decade, the North Dakota 

 station, for example, is adding a hundred mil- 

 lions of dollars to the wealth of that state alone, 

 ten millions of dollars per year, largely by rea- 

 son of the experimental work of the station 

 in the development of cereals. And this is but 

 an illustration. 



Usually the stations are affiliated with the 



