A SUMMARY OF RECENT PROGRESS 187 



gate eight or ten million dollars, and it has in its 

 employment hundreds of experts carrying on 

 laboratory and field research, scouring the world 

 for plants and seeds that may be of economic 

 value, and assisting to control plant and animal 

 diseases. It is also distributing a vast amount 

 of practical information, put in readable form 

 and adapted to the average farmer. Its work 

 of seeking to extend the markets of our agricul- 

 tural products is one of its notable successes. 



Agricultural schools have been talked about 

 for a century, and during the early part of the 

 last century several were started. The first 

 permanent agricultural college was opened in 

 1857, in Michigan. The Merrill Act of 1862 

 gave rise to a system of such colleges and today 

 there will be found one in every state and terri- 

 tory, besides several for the colored people of 

 the South. Up to 1890, these colleges had been 

 not wholly satisfactory and the farming class 

 was not patronizing very fully their agricultural 

 courses. The fault belonged both to the college 

 and to the farmers. The farmers were skeptical 

 of the value of agricultural education, and the 

 colleges were often out of sympathy with the 

 real needs of the farmers, and in fact found it 

 difficult to break away from the pedagogical 



