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acquire knowledge agriculturally important rather than dis- 

 tribute. The station is not a teaching agency either in the 

 academic or popular field. If the investigator is not to be de- 

 fended in the continuous and uninterrupted use of his time in 

 the study of problems, but is to be submerged by the demands 

 of a popular educational campaign, as is the tendency in some 

 states, his value in the field of research will be practically de- 

 stroyed. His appearances at farmers' institutes, grange meet- 

 ings and other popular gatherings should be judiciously limited. 

 The farmer has a wrong point of view when, as is so often the 

 case, he measures the value of a member of a station staff by 

 the frequenecy and success of his platform appearances. Such 

 an estimate is a failure to understand that agricultural practice 

 has no greater need today than an enlarged vision through more 

 and safer knowledge, and that a new truth may have vastly 

 greater value than many volumes of pleasing addresses. 



There is no less reason for solicitude concerning the work of 

 the agricultural college. Some days ago I took part in a con- 

 ference of a few men, four of whom have developed with nota- 

 ble success the agricultural colleges of departments under their 

 care, and they wJere of one opinion concerning the critical need 

 in the existing agricultural situation, viz., that it is an adequate 

 supply of well trained investigators, teachers and leaders. The 

 fact is, experiment stations are inadequately supplied with men 

 competent to enter the field of inquiry, the number of college 

 teachers who have made a notable success in the agricultural 

 class room is surprisingly small and the supply of trained and 

 well equipped minds available for service in carrying on the 

 widespread efforts of popular education is much below the de- 

 mand. These are fundamental weaknesses. 



The relations between sound learning and the farm are not 

 unusual or pecuhar. It is as essential to agriculture as to any 

 other vocation, that its activities shall be related to centers of 

 intellectual stimulus and acquirement, where studious minds shall 

 deal with truth under well organized and searching academic 

 methods, and where students shall be trained to be safe and 

 conservative exponents of agricultural science. The shifty va- 

 porings of mere opinion are just as dangerous to agriculture as 

 they would be to the practice of engineering. Moreover, the 

 man destined for leadership in agriculture should be broadly 

 equipped. Narrow technical training that ignores human rela- 



