No. 123.] REPORT OF COMMISSIONER. 7 



Board of Agriculture antedated the establishment of the college 

 and teaching agriculture was carried on by the Board as a part 

 of its work. Recognizing the overlapping and duplication of 

 effort some time since, the Massachusetts Agricultural College 

 and the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture entered into 

 a memorandum of agreement whereby the regulatory and ad- 

 ministrative agricultural work of the State is to be done by this 

 Department and the educational work by the college. The 

 Department of Agriculture has entirely withdrawn from the 

 educational field. Looking toward greater efficiency and the 

 proper correlation of efforts, I recommend that the administra- 

 tion of the laws regulating the sale of commercial fertilizers and 

 commercial feeding stuffs be transferred from the Director of 

 the Experiment Station to the Commissioner of Agriculture. 

 I also recommend that the analytical work which is of a scien- 

 tific nature, and the publication of the results of the analysis 

 which are educational, be left, as they now are, with the Ex- 

 periment Station. This recommendation is in line with a 

 movement in the State Departments of Agriculture in all of the 

 other States in the Union. A few years ago the National 

 Association of Commissioners, Secretaries and Departments of 

 Agriculture outlined a plan for the differentiation of these lines 

 of work. I quote two paragraphs from a resolution adopted 

 by this association in 1920. Since that time most of the States 

 have swung into line and are following this plan, which has been 

 found to be of the greatest degree of efficiency and economy. 



The beginning of this work was at the New York meeting in 1916, and 

 culminated in a careful and detailed discussion and unanimous adoption 

 of the plan now in force under this association at the meeting at Balti- 

 more in January, 1919. The plan was first outlined at a meeting of the 

 executive committee and officers of the association in Washington in 

 November, 1918. A committee appointed at the time of this meeting 

 presented the plan to the Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. D. F. Houston, 

 and later to the Executive Committee of the National Association of 

 Land Grant Colleges and Universities. It was adopted by both agencies 

 and by the entire body of representatives of Land Grant Colleges at their 

 national meeting at Washington in November, 1918. With this adoption 

 by our own association it became the national pohcy as a thorough and 

 detailed discussion by each of the three important agencies concerned. 



The plan places all regulatory control and administrative work relating 

 to agriculture, and extension work concerning the same, with the State 

 departments, and locates the purely experimental and educational work 

 with the stations and college. 



