October 2, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



471 



thing of the human heart all classes owe 

 her allegiance. In her the rarest individ- 

 ualist and the broadest communist find com- 

 mon ground. Individuals have freed the 

 many, which, would they remain so, must 

 nourish the fields from which their liberty 

 has sprung. When democracies forget, the 

 individual may rise to do what the many 

 should. A Vilas, a Carnegie, a Rockefeller 

 puts governments to shame. To discover 

 among us the pioneers of thought and to set 

 them at the world's work is university 

 biisiness, and he who does this, be he phil- 

 anthropist, trustee, president, or faculty 

 member, is a university man. 



However uneven the progress of the uni- 

 versity, however in innocence or by intent 

 those momentarily in command may 

 chasten her spirit, the need for her will 

 keep her alive. The ever-new problems of 

 an ever-changing universe guarantee this. 

 In the history of our world that religion 

 has always been best which has been new- 

 est, because the newest takes greatest cog- 

 nizance of and tries best to meet the prob- 

 lems of the age in which it is born. Reli- 

 gion invites defeat because it attempts to 

 do more than this by prescribing for all the 

 future which no age and no spokesman for 

 an age can foresee. For the same reason 

 political constitutions ultimately meet 

 amendment or pass out entirely. Our fore- 

 fathers could hardly draft laws to meet the 

 problems of steam transportation, of tele- 

 graphic monopoly, of meat trusts and the 

 thousand other things that our own age has 

 discovered. Only science, which on new 

 evidence will change all her laws over 

 night, is as secure to-morrow as she is 

 to-day. Her spirit is the spirit of the uni- 

 versity to which alone the strong will and 

 the weak must forever bow. 



Maktin H. Fischer 



APPSOPBIATIONS FOE THE DEPABTMENT 

 OF AGEICULTVBE-^ 



With the continued enlargement and exten- 

 sion of the functions of the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture, the annual appropri- 

 ation act providing for its support has become 

 more and more a measure of much public in- 

 terest. The latest of these acts, signed by Presi- 

 dent Wilson June 30, 1914, and carrying ap- 

 propriations for the fiscal year commencing 

 with the following day, is no exception in thia 

 respect, again establishing as it does the prin- 

 ciple of federal aid to agriculture in the broad- 

 est use of the term, providing for the mainte- 

 nance and development of its manifold activ- 

 ities to a larger extent than ever before, and 

 opening the way to an increased eiEciency 

 through a reorganization of its work. 



The total amount carried by the act is $19,- 

 865,832. This is an increase of $1,878,887, or 

 over 11 per cent, over the previous year, and 

 of $804,500 over the estimates submitted by 

 the department. The increased allotments are 

 distributed throughout the entire department, 

 and while many are designed to provide more 

 adequately for its administrative and regula- 

 tory functions, which now absorb nearly two 

 thirds of the total appropriations, opportunity 

 is also afforded for the extension of most of its 

 lines of research, and especially for the devel- 

 opment of its various forms of demonstration 

 work. 



In its general make-up, the law conforms 

 closely to its immediate predecessor, and ia 

 fact is somewhat more rigidly confined to the 

 routine work of the department. There are, 

 however, a number of items of new legislation. 

 Thus, the Secretary of Agriculture is directed 

 to prepare a plan for " reorganizing, redirect- 

 ing and systematizing the work of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture as the interests of econom- 

 ical and efficient administration may require." 

 This plan is to be submitted to Congress with 

 the estimates of expenditures for the fiscal year 

 1915-16, these estimates being arranged on the 

 basis of its provisions. A special object of the 

 proposed reorganization is the elimination of 

 the possibility of duplication, and the securing 



iFrom the Experiment Station Becord. 



