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of good government, we demand of the Legislature to abolish 

 the Geneva Agricultural Experiment Station. It is a humbug." 

 Yet the Geneva Station now lives and received from the Legis- 

 lature in 1908, the sum of $89,500. Of this, $20,000 was for 

 scientific research, $10,000 for fertilizer inspection, and $3,500 

 for the inspection of feeding stuffs. What do you know about 

 this for a humbug? 



Another source of opposition may be mentioned. The Maine 

 Station was connected with the State College and the College 

 was then young and with small influence. To be sure it had 

 graduated its first class of thirteen, little more than a dozen years 

 before, it had five or six college buildings including a labora- 

 tory in common use by college and station, but it was obliged 

 to crawl upon its hands and knees to the Legislature to get a 

 few thousand dollars a year for most urgent needs. The out- 

 break of pleuro-pneumonia in the college herd had made it 

 necessary to destroy the animals, and the Legislature had been 

 asked for an appropriation of $5,000 to repair the loss. There 

 v/as a division in the public mind upon the wisdom of such 

 action regarding the herd and in asking for an unusual appro- 

 priation, which did not add to the harmony of feeling in sup- 

 port of the station — if, indeed, it did not operate against it. 



As this was but a year after the station had been organized 

 and before it had shown any distinctive work, the station and 

 the college both suffered from that public calamity. It led, 

 however, to the enactment of better laws for protection to the 

 livestock of the State from the introduction and spread of 

 contagious diseases. 



The State has been exceedingly fortunate in having as its 

 chief staff-workers men born in Maine, known to our people, 

 acquainted with our State and its agriculture, and educated 

 for their work at our own State College, in other great educa- 

 tional institutions of New England and by post-graduate studies 

 at foreign universities and experiment stations. The late Wal- 

 ter Balentine was its first acting Director. He was a graduate 

 from our State College and afterwards had worked at other 

 stations, studied in Germany and was connected with the sta- 

 tion until his death in 1894. For the first eleven years of its 

 work, Dr. W. H. Jordan was Director — a graduate of our State 

 College and since 1896 Director of the New York Experiment 

 Station, where he has done magnificent work and placed the 



