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And a great educational movement is here, one that is rapidly 

 enlarging. It embraces in its sweep the university, the school, 

 the church, the grange, agricultural organizations and even the 

 railroad train, whose efforts include the college class room, short 

 winter courses, farmers' institutes, convention meetings, station 

 bulletins, extension literature, demonstration farms, — in fact an 

 almost bewildering variety of activity. The significant fact, the 

 fact that should arrest our attention just now, is that this effort 

 is very largely of a popular character, the distribution of highly 

 diluted information. Not only is this information greatly atten- 

 uated but taken as a whole it presents an unspeakable confusion 

 of sound knowledge and unwarranted inference and opinion. 

 Much of its is exploited in the name of science but has no sci- 

 entific justification. Ihere are some self-ordained priests of 

 science who teach strange doctrines. This kind of endeavor is 

 absorbing much energy on the part of the college of agricul- 

 ture, and to some extent, of the experiment station. 



Now these institutions are fixed and permanent agencies. 

 They are here to stay, with an enlarging influence and useful- 

 ness as time goes on. It is important to inquire, therefore, 

 what is their true and most useful function, whether the almost 

 resistless tide of popular agricultural propaganda is to carry 

 them too far away from certain essential functions in promoting 

 agricultural betterment which only they can exercise. I say 

 this because there is, and always has been, more or less con- 

 fusion in the public mind concerning what the college and sta- 

 tion should be expected to do, and the experiment station espe- 

 cially has been coerced into efforts that do not belong to it. I 

 am inclined to think that Maine has largely escaped this mis- 

 application of its station's activities, and if so, it is a matter for 

 congratulation. Do not abandon your wise attitude. 



Every department of human endeavor, agriculture no less 

 than any other, needs as a basis of safe practice a body of well 

 grounded knowledge. The greatest and the most permanent 

 acquisitions that have come to agriculture as an art during the 

 past fifty years are the outcome of profound scientific studies 

 •vnd our future success in conserving and developing the funda- 

 mental resources of this nation will depend largely upon our 

 increased mastery, through increased knowledge, of the matter 

 and energy of the physical work. Knowledge is a limiting fac- 

 tor in all human endeavor. It is the function of the station to 



