June 1941] Agricultural Research in New Hampshire 5 



During and as a result of the war, a real discrepancy was de- 

 veloped in buying power. Previous to the war, we had been develop- 

 ing a new country, borrowing money in Europe to finance the exten- 

 sion of railroads and other accessories until our enormous annual in- 

 terest payments made a good excuse for supplying some of Europe's 

 food needs to gain back some part of the credits we needed. But 

 after the war was over, Europe owed us five times as much as we 

 had ever owed her. European countries could not hope to pay cash, 

 and we wished neither their goods nor the assumption of any more 

 of their debts. Thus, we lost our foreign market. 



For the first time in the world's history, the United States was 

 endowed with an apparent over-supply of farm products. There 

 were other contributing causes within our own boundaries. A great- 

 ly reduced horse population meant a corresponding decrease in de- 

 mand for farm production, and, later, curtailed buying power was 

 evident among the great majority of our consuming public which 

 had been released from food production to live elsewhere than on 

 farms. Other changes resulted from the war, or were concurrent 

 as a matter of chance. In either case, many reacted on post-war ad- 

 justments in agriculture. Under the stress of war, we put 10,000,- 

 000 acres of new land into wheat and at practically the same time 

 completed the conquest of still more agricultural land. Just previous 

 to the war we reached the peak of migration from country to city, a 

 half-million persons a year, which had to be fully reversed some 

 twenty years after the war. The census year in which we had more 

 urban than rural population for the first time had been passed. In- 

 dustry and commerce had advanced to a position of dominance. A 

 lessening of the birth rate had become noticeable and prognostica- 

 tions were rife with the idea of an early stationary population to be 

 almost immediately superseded by a decline. The accuracy of this 

 last prophesy has since become increasingly obvious. 



From the standpoint of research work in agriculture, all this has 

 a relationship. For the first quarter of a century following the Hatch 

 act of 1887, agricultural research contributed to science for teaching 

 and for production. The two together met the challenge of the 

 world's greatest need in a significant way by feeding twice as many 

 people and probably about twice as well. Then came the World 

 war and its aftermath, in which farmers have been subject to criti- 

 cism for producing too much and for not properly adjusting crops to 

 consumption needs. Nevertheless, every large city has perpetuated 

 its slums, where lack of proper food is scarcely less apparent than 

 lack of clothing and shelter; and certainly foreign regions of concen- 

 trated populations, like China and India, have never been over-sup- 

 plied. Because farmers had solved one part of the problem, there is 

 little justification to blame them for all the other parts that still re- 

 main unsolved. 



Agricultural research funds have been directed into quite dif- 

 ferent channels since the war, embracing more of marketing, human 

 relations, utilization of by-products, surpluses, and conservation of 



