194 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. TOL. L. No. 1287 



delian methods of cross-breeding and other 

 lines of work which result in the introduction 

 of new varieties and kinds. Certain business 

 men who are concerned with the results are 

 not backward in saying that this introduction 

 of varieties is often harmful rather than bene- 

 ficial and those of us who are close enough to 

 the field to note the results are perhaps will- 

 ing to admit that many valuable varieties are 

 so intermixed and so jumbled as to merit such 

 disapproval. 



It is safe to say that in cereal agriculture 

 varieties are not kept separate, and are not 

 handled in the same intelligent method as 

 that which characterizes the best fruit and 

 vegetable growing methods. Is there any rea- 

 son why such should be the ease? 



Again, as I have pointed out in other ad- 

 dresses, though most agriculturists and many 

 able farmers are convinced that a crop rota- 

 tion is a necessary process for best seed and 

 crop production in cereals, yet, there are few 

 crop rotation series which are recognized for 

 any particular region which are carried out 

 with any consistency. There must be some 

 general reason which accounts for such fail- 

 ures to apply the principles, methods and 

 teachings which all of us and many able farm- 

 ers believe in. 



I do not wish here to enter into a dis- 

 cussion of crop rotation, soil tillage or purely 

 sanitary matters of cropping, but will call at- 

 tention to one phase which I think illustrates 

 the way out, so that processes known to be 

 necessary may be constructively continuous. 

 I advocate a legal basis for bringing about 

 stability and standardization of varieties in 

 cereal cropping. I believe that there is good 

 excuse for official supervision of seed pro- 

 duction and distribution. 



I am not, I believe, unduly optimistic when 

 I afiirm that under properly systematized seed 

 standardization and sanitary cropping through 

 means of proper handling of the soil and seed, 

 any state or the nation might readily lift its 

 annual average yield of wheat several bushels 

 per acre per year. I think that a minimum 

 increase of five to ten bushels per acre for 

 proper systematic handling of the seed crop 



might not be beyond reasonable expectation. 

 Further, I believe this would be doubly as- 

 sured were it no longer possible for a man to 

 plant the same general crop two years in suc- 

 cession on the same land. For the land con- 

 trol proposition, we may not yet be ready, but 

 certainly, for the seed control proposition we 

 have reached the stage when it is folly to 

 claim that further improvement can be made 

 by simple process of education when almost 

 all the processes of marketing and general 

 farm procedure are so conducted as to offset 

 any improvement that can be made by inter- 

 mittent educational processes, however effect- 

 ively administered. I need not only call at- 

 tention to the fact that there are very few 

 new varieties of cereals which remain in rea- 

 sonably pure form past the third generation 

 on the farm and in the market. Very few of 

 the wheats in the leading districts survive a 

 decade before they are replaced by some new 

 creation which runs perhaps only a shorter 

 more precarious existence. 



Opposition to Progress. — Many of us are 

 prone to descant on the initiative being left 

 in the hands of the farmer and many in the 

 business world or manufacturing side are 

 pretty sure to decry any attempt to improve 

 matters by the enactment of law. I am quite 

 convinced that laws which are enacted but 

 never put into operation are useless. I am 

 also convinced that those which are enacted 

 and put into operation and which remain in 

 operation, such as the sanitary laws for the 

 control of Texas fever, smallpox and com- 

 pulsory disinfection after diphtheria, scarlet 

 fever, etc., are laws which should have been 

 enacted and which, because they are still in 

 force, prove that there was a necessity for 

 such enactment. I also believe that it will be 

 understood that many laws are enacted which 

 do not need to be enforced. They form the 

 educational basis for stable processes. Many 

 good laws are self-operative. Such laws re- 

 main on the books as a basis and guide for 

 those officials whose business it is to advocate 

 progressive advance. Such law, for instance, 

 is the ordinary anti-expectoration law. It 

 was easy to make fun of and to say that it 



