May 5, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



683 



could give credit to the sources of all the 

 suggestions, but this is impracticable, even 

 though in some cases I have followed very 

 closely the ideas and the language of my 

 informants. I shall be obliged to assume 

 full responsibility for the statements. 



THE TECHNICAL AGRICULTURAL PROBLEMS. 



In America the so-called problems of 

 agriculture have been largely those of the 

 mere conquest of land. They are the re- 

 sult of migration and of the phenomenal 

 development of sis'ter industries. They 

 have resulted from a growing, developing 

 coimtry. They have been largely physical, 

 mechanical, transportational, extraneous — 

 the problems of the engineer and inventor 

 rather than of the farmer. The problem 

 has not been to make two blades of grass 

 grow where only one grew before, but how 

 economically to harvest and transport the 

 one blade that has grown almost without 

 effort. 



During the past hundred years there 

 has been an area of development on the 

 western border of the developed country, 

 and this has been able to compete at an 

 economical advantage with the older area 

 farther east. The price of land has fallen 

 in the east, while it has risen in the west. 

 From 1870 to 1900 we practically doubled 

 our population and doubled our agricul- 

 tural area. Aside from the geometrical in- 

 crease in the population, this development 

 has been due to a fertile, level prairie which 

 was practically treeless. Hitherto the ax- 

 man has hewn his way tree by tree. The 

 development of the area west of the Mis- 

 sissippi River is probably the most remark- 

 able in the history of the world. A second 

 cause for this development is the consoli- 

 dation of railroads into transcontinental 

 lines ; and another is the improvement of 

 labor-sa'ving machinery, of which the self- 

 binding harvester is the most conspicuous 

 example, a machine that first attracted 



wide attention at the Centennial Exposition 

 in 1876. 



To this day the American is a cheap-land 

 farmer. A few minutes on the train from 

 a European city brings one into a highly 

 tilled agricultural country. The other day 

 I took an express train from New York 

 city. It was three quarters of an hour 

 before I saw what I could call a farm, and 

 a full hour before I reached a farming 

 country. 



As early as one hundred years ago, a 

 distinct movement for the betterment of 

 agriculture had set in. This movement 

 was largely educational. It was an effort 

 to improve the farmer, quite as much as 

 to improve the farm. AVashington was 

 vitally interested in the problem. He 

 wished to have a central board or clearing- 

 house for agricultural information. The 

 full fruition of his hopes came with the 

 establishment of a secretaryship of agricul- 

 ture in the President's cabinet, in Benja- 

 min Harrison's administration. In 1799 a 

 concrete proposition for the establishment 

 of an agricultural college in Pennsylvania 

 came to an untimely end. In 1821 instruc- 

 tion was given in agriculture in the lyceum 

 at Gardiner, Maine. In 1824 a school of 

 agriculture was opened at Derby, Con- 

 necticut. A number of other similar at- 

 tempts were made previous to the passage 

 of the Land Grant Act of 1862, but of 

 these only the IMichigan Agricultural Col- 

 lege persists. The gist of the whole move- 

 ment was to adapt education to men's lives. 

 The culmination was the Land Grant Act, 

 the purpose of which is 'to promote the 

 liberal and practical education of the in- 

 dustrial classes in the several pursuits and 

 professions in life. ' So far as agriculture 

 was concerned, the Land Grant Act was 

 somewhat premature. The developing and 

 organizing mechanical and engineering 

 trades were the first to profit by it. Agri- 

 culture will now have its tui^n. 



