New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. a7 
of steps already taken and of needs now manifest. Here, as in 
the case of the teaching institutions, the several states joined the 
Federal government in the maintenance and equipment of insti- 
tutions whose function should be that of experiment and research. 
So satisfactory and yet so incomplete has been this work, that 
recently the Federal government has provided for doubling the 
appropriation of the Hatch Act, in order that the work of investi- 
gation and research should not be hampered, but given abundant 
opportunity for development. The co-operation and support of the 
several states in this matter has been on the whole very commend- 
able. The states with largest resources and greatest interests have 
naturally been most generous. Even those states whose tax dupli- 
cates are small, land somewhat impoverished or undeveloped and 
population more or less limited, have not failed to make a com- 
mendable record in the maintenance of this fundamental work. 
The third great movement in this general field has been the 
organization and development of the Department of Agriculture. 
The importance of this department to the country is well understood 
by intelligent men who are familiar with its work. Here as in many 
other places occasional statistical statements of brilliant achieve- 
ments receive attention in the public press, but they do not in any 
great degree represent or convey to the public mind the solid, sub- 
stantial work that is carried on by nearly two thousand men devoted 
to the scientific and administrative problems that underlie the suc- 
cessful administration of the great interests of agriculture. It is 
not the purpose to-day, to offer any discussion of this department 
futher than to suggest, that in the comprehensive view of Federal 
and State aid to investigation, a large place must be given to the 
Department of Agriculture, and that these three movements as 
represented in the Colleges, Experiment Stations and Department 
of Agriculture, are bound up in a harmonious attempt to preserve 
and develop the agricultural resources of the country. One of 
these lines is chiefly experimental, another is chiefly teaching, and 
yet another is chiefly, although not exclusively, administrative. As 
the country comes to recognize these three agencies and the import- 
ance of the work undertaken a new enthusiasm will be developed 
and a new interest taken in a study of what is purely a develop- 
mental function of the government. 
Let us turn now for some consideration of the theory under- 
lying these great movements. Let us ask ourselves what justifica- 
tion there is for so great’ an enterprise on the part of the people 
