26 



PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



cans have found that genuine scientific servants are the hub of 

 the whole concern. May our re-organised Department of Agri- 

 culture find the same. 



A happy feature of the American organisation is the holding 

 of Conventions of delegates from the Agricultural Colleges and 

 Experiment Stations of the whole Union in which technical 

 and general questions are discussed. Recommendations from 

 such bodies of experts in theory and practice carry with them a 

 weight which it is difficult for officialism or political interest to 

 resist. 



The fine spirit which animates the central government is well 

 shown in an Address by President Roosevelt at the Jubilee 

 celebration of the Founding of Agricultural Colleges of the 

 United States, held at Lansing, Mich., last year. May I quote 

 some of his sayings 1 " We of the United States must develop 

 a system under which each individual citizen shall be trained so 

 as to be effective individually as an economic unit, and fit to be 

 organised with his fellows so that he and they can work in 

 efficient fashion together." " The question is vital to our future 

 progress, and public attention should be focussed upon it." " The 

 calling of the skilled tiller of the soil, the calling of the skilled 

 mechanic, should alike be recognised as professions, just as 

 emphatically as the callings of lawyer, of doctor, of banker, 

 merchant, or clerk. . . . They should be trained alike in 

 head and in hand. They should get over the idea that to earn 

 12 dollars a week and call it 'salary ' is better than to earn 25 

 dollars a week and call it ' wages.'" *■' In every great crisis of 

 the past a peculiar dependence has had to be placed upon the 

 farming population, and this dependence has hitherto been justi" 

 fied. But it can not be justified in the future if agriculture is 

 permitted to sink in the scale as compared with other employ- 

 ments. We can not afford to lose that pre-eminently typical 

 American, the farmer who owns his own farm." " The prime 

 need must always be for real research, resulting in scientific 

 conclusions of proved soundness." " Hereafter another great 

 task before the National Department of Agriculture must be to 



