Febbuaby 26, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



299 



ing itself to a multitude of interests and 

 operating with remarkable effectiveness. 

 The chain of colleges of agriculture and 

 experiment stations, generously coopera- 

 tive between nation and state, is unlike 

 any other development anywhere, mean- 

 ing more, I think, for the future welfare 

 and peace of the people than any one of us 

 yet foresees. There is the finest fraternal- 

 ism, and yet without clannishness, between 

 these great agencies, setting a good ex- 

 ample in public service. And to these 

 agencies we are to add the state depart- 

 ments of agriculture, the work of private 

 endowments, although yet in its infancy, 

 the growing and very desirable contact with 

 the rural field of many institutions of 

 learning. All these agencies comprise a 

 distinctly modern phase of public activity. 



Now, the problem is to relate all this 

 work to the development of a democracy. 

 I am not thinking so much of the develop- 

 ment of a form of government as of a real 

 democratic expression on the part of the 

 people. Agriculture is our bottom indus- 

 try. As we organize its affairs, so to a great 

 degree shall we secure the results in so- 

 ciety in general. 



I desire to discuss certain questions that 

 bear somewhat on this underlying prob- 

 lem. I shall approach these questions 

 mostly from the point of view of our pres- 

 ent public-service institutions for agricul- 

 ture, leaving the other or non-public phases 

 of the problem for consideration one year 

 hence. I do not presume to make specifi- 

 cations for the institutions; but the ques- 

 tions may be discussed and perhaps we can 

 do something to protect the institutions 

 from demands that should not be made of 

 them. Perhaps you will make some mental 

 applications of the discussion to other pub- 

 lic work than that which is specially agri- 

 cukural. 



It is auspicious, and perhaps it is fortu- 



nate, that this new section comes into being 

 at a time when a vast new organized move- 

 ment in the interest of agriculture is ta- 

 king hold of this country. This movement 

 is connected very intimately with govern- 

 ment, and therefore with policies affecting 

 all the people; and it is possible, even in a 

 democracy, that such a trend, or even such 

 a formalizing, may arise in the beginning 

 as can not be greatly modified, or much 

 changed if change should be necessary, in 

 any number of years. You know that I 

 refer to the Agricultural Extension Act 

 which was signed by President Wilson on 

 the eighth of last May. No such national 

 plan on such a scale has ever been at- 

 tempted; and it almost staggers one when 

 one even partly comprehends the tremen- 

 dous consequences that in all likelihood 

 will come of it. The significance of it is 

 not yet grasped by the great body of the 

 people. 



We are at the parting of the ways. For 

 years without number — for years that run 

 into the centuries when men have slaugh- 

 tered each other on many fields thinking 

 that they were on the fields of honor, when 

 many awful despotisms have ground men 

 into the dust, the despotisms thinking 

 themselves divine — for all these years there 

 have been men on the land trying to see 

 the light, trying to make mankind hear, 

 hoping but never realizing. They have 

 been the pawns on the great battlefields, 

 men taken out of the peasantries to be 

 hurled against other men they did not 

 know and for no rewards except further 

 enslavement. They may even have been 

 developed to a high degree of manual or 

 technical skill that they might the better 

 support governments to make conquests. 

 They have been on the bottom, upholding 

 the whole superstructure and pressed into 

 the earth by the weight of it. When the 



