THE CRISIS IN AGRICULTURE 21 



of ttie United States during the past 25 years 

 has been reflected by the growing national inter- 

 est in these forms of development. A construc- 

 tive long-time program of development for 

 agriculture had been discussed at times, but 

 comparatively little has been done about it. 

 Following the Civil War there was great 

 impetus given to the development of the appli- 

 cation of science to farming through the estab- 

 lishment of the Federal Department of Agricul- 

 ture, the State Agricultural Experiment 

 Stations and later the State Colleges. 



Scientific farming was hailed as the means by 

 which all of the needs of agriculture would 

 be met and during a period of 50 years the 

 advances made in this field have been tremen- 

 dous. From a beginning when there was practi- 

 cally no organized science of farming we de- 

 veloped rapidly until we were recognized as 

 the most progressive of all nations in our 

 methods. 



Likewise, improvements in agricultural 

 machinery came with astonishing frequency 

 and resulted in greater production from an 

 increased efficiency of the relatively small num- 

 ber engaged in productive agriculture. The 

 business of farming was organized and sys- 



