8 Station Bulletin 372 



Twenty-five years later, harboring no small amount of discouragement 

 from the lack of progress in the teaching of agriculture as a science in our 

 newly-conceived colleges, further legislation was sought to make organized 

 experimental work available in the quest for obviously needed agricultural 

 facts. In 1887, the Hatch Act, which provided each state agricultural col- 

 lege with a nucleus of $15,000 a year to establish an agricultural experi- 

 ment station, was passed by The Congress. This development immediately 

 started an accumulation of scientific information. Crop yields from different 

 practices and varieties were tabulated. The results of feeding different ra- 

 tions to different animals were considered and summarized to accumulate 

 simple, but significant, data for teaching and for further research. For ex- 

 ample, the first bulletin published by New Hampshire's Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, in 1888, was entitled, "Ensilage." Bulletins 2, 3, and 4, pub- 

 lished within the same year, were entitled, respectively, "Feeding Experi- 

 ments", "When to Cut Corn for Ensilage", "The Science and Practice of Stock 

 Feeding". The next year, we published "Fertilizer and Fertilizing Mate- 

 rials", "Experiments with Fertilizers", "Test on Dairy Apparatus", "Feeding 

 Experiments - Part I - Principles of Feeding, Part II - Corn Meal, Middlings, 

 Sxiorts and Cottonseed Compared". 



It is reasonable to assume that these various and significant investiga- 

 tions of homely, everyday farm practices seemed a little too commonplace 

 for the intelligentsia, who began to question their importance. The Con- 

 gi ess was able to satisfy them, apparently (as well as more practical people 

 who sensed the extreme value of just this kind of a beginning) by passing, 

 in 1906, the Adams Act which added another annual stipend of $15,000 to 

 each agricultural experiment station but specified that it must be used for 

 fundamental research. 



The next big world event which transpired was to harass humanity. It 

 greatly influenced agricultural research; and its aftermath was peculiarly up- 

 setting to agriculture as a whole. This was the First World War which ended 

 jp 1918. A few examples will suffice to show what wonderful progress 

 American farmers had made up to that time. Previous to 1914, when this 

 war began, we had reduced our farm population relatively to such an extent 

 that scarcely one-fifth of our people now lived on farms. They represented 

 not more than four per cent, or one-twenty-fifth of the world's farmers. But 

 this little handful of agricultural producers was averaging year by year to 

 produce 70 per cent of all the corn grown in the world, 60 per cent of the 

 cotton, 50 per cent of the tobacco, 20 per cent of the oats and hay, 50 per 

 cent of the hogs, and 25 per cent of the cattle. In an attempt to pay interest, 

 at least, on our European indebtedness for money borrowed to develop our 

 railroads, farm machinery, and other enterprises during recent decades of 

 the country's westward expansion, we had come to export annually more agri- 

 cultural produce to help foreign countries than all the rest of the world's farm 

 exports added together. Everybody is aware of some of the significance of 

 agricultural production in helping to win that war, notwithstanding the 

 threats and accomplishments of German U-boats. 



Again, following this Avar, appreciation of what agricultural production 

 had done and the significance to date of agricultural research in making such 

 production possible contributed to another most significant boost to experi- 



