CERTAIN DESERT PLANTS AS EMERGENCY STOCK EEED. 



29 



IN THE FIELD OF AGRICULTURE we have agencies and 

 instrumentalities, fortunately, such as no other Government 

 in the world can show. The Department of Agriculture is 

 undoubtedly the greatest practical and scientific agricultural 

 organization in the world. Its total annual budget of $46,000,000 

 has been increased during the last four years more than 72 per 

 cent. It has a staff of 18,000, including a large number of 

 highly trained experts, and alongside of it stand the unique 

 land-grant colleges, which are without example elsewhere, and 

 the 69 State and Federal experiment stations. These colleges 

 and experiment stations have a total endowment of plant and 

 equipment of $172,000,000 and an income of more than 

 $35,000,000, with 10,271 teachers, a resident student body of 

 125,000, and a vast additional number receiving instruction at 

 their homes. County agents, joint officers of the Department 

 of Agriculture and of the colleges, are everywhere cooperating 

 with the farmers and assisting them. The number of extension 

 workers under the Smith-Lever act and under the recent 

 emergency legislation has grown to 5,500 men and women 

 working regularly in the various communities and taking to the 

 farmer the latest scientific and practical information. Along- 

 side these great public agencies stand the very effective voluntary 

 organizations among the farmers themselves, which are more 

 and more learning the best methods of cooperation and the best 

 methods of putting to practical use the assistance derived from 

 governmental sources. The banking legislation of the last two 

 or three years has given the farmers access to the great lendable 

 capital of the country, and it has become the duty both of the 

 men in charge of the Federal reserve banking system and of the 

 farm-loan banking system to see to it that the farmers obtain 

 the credit, both short and long term, to which they are entitled 

 not only, but which it is imperatively necessary should be extended 

 to them, if the present tasks of the country are to be adequately 

 performed. Both by direct purchase of nitrates and by the 

 establishment of plants to produce nitrates, the Government is 

 doing its utmost to assist in the problem of fertilization. The 

 Department of Agriculture and other agencies are actively 

 assisting the farmers to locate, safeguard, and secure at cost an 

 adequate supply of sound seed. — From President Wilson's Mes- 

 sage to the Farmers' Conference at TJrbana, El., January 31, 1918. 



