Art. 3.-AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED

STATES.

1. Historical Sketch of the United States Department of Agriculture; Its Objects and Present Organization. Compiled by Charles H. Greathouse. Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1907.

2. Hearings before the Committee of Agriculture, House of Representatives, on the Agricultural Appropriation Bill. Sixty-Fourth Congress; First Session. Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1915.

3. A Brief Statutory History of the United States Department of Agriculture. By Francis G. Caffey. Case and Comment, February and March, 1916. Volume XXII, Nos 9 and 10.

4. Programme of Work of the United States Department of Agriculture for the Fiscal Year 1916-1917. Prepared under the Direction of the Secretary of Agriculture by E. H. Bradley, July 1, 1916. Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1916.

5. Congressional Record. Vols LI and LIV. Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1914, 1917.

THE Department of Agriculture at Washington has been a department of first rank in the executive branch of the Government of the United States-a department presided over by a Cabinet Minister-since 1889. In these twenty-eight years it has gradually acquired one outstanding distinction. With the single exception of the Post Office, it is to-day in more close and frequent touch with the hundred million inhabitants of the United States, and it renders them more constant and direct service, than any other department of state at Washington. There is no state department at Whitehall with which it can well be compared. Comparison is not possible, because the work of the Department of Agriculture at Washington comprises work that at Whitehall is divided among at least three departments-the Board of Agriculture, the Local Government Board, and the Education Department; and also because the Department of Agriculture at Washington does much work that, owing to differences in conditions in England and the United States, has no counterpart in governmental undertakings at Whitehall.

Agricultural colleges and farm experiment stations, deriving much of their income from the Federal Government, are established in all the states. Through these colleges and experiment stations, and also through county agricultural leaders and demonstrators, appointed under an Act of Congress of 1914 known as the Smith-Lever Act, the Department of Agriculture is carrying out an educational programme as wide as the continent. In the administration of pure-food laws enacted by Congress, as distinct from those enacted by the state legislatures, the Department also discharges some duties that in England are delegated to the Local Government Board. In this work the Department at Washington serves all the people of the United States-the people of the cities as well as those of the rural areas. Its educational work, on the other hand, is in the direct interest of the men and women, the boys and girls on the six million farms in the United States.

This article is concerned only with the educational work of the Department of Agriculture. The simplest method of describing the work of Congress and of the Department on behalf of good agriculture and efficient farm economy is to take the budget of one of the state agricultural colleges, and show the connexion of Congress and the Department with the sixty-six agricultural colleges and with the farm experiment stations associated with the colleges, and the connexion of the colleges and the Department with the vast scheme of educational extension work now being carried out under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914.

The budget of the agricultural college of the State of Illinois, for the year 1916-1917, shows that it received grants from the Federal Government towards the cost of its maintenance under three heads: *

1. For the endowment of teaching in agriculture and the mechanic arts (Morrill and Nelson funds) annually

2. For investigation in agriculture (Hatch and Adams funds)

$50,000,000

30,000,000

3. For demonstration work in agriculture and home economics (Smith and Lever funds, 1916-17). 58,184,030

Total

$138,184,030

* Cf. 'Congressional Record,' 1917, vol. liv, no. 52, 3177, 3178.

In some states there is more than one agricultural college. The total number in 1917 is sixty-six. The history of these institutions is soon told. So long as the old doctrines of the Democratic party were maintained in their integrity at Washington, the Federal Government had no connexion, direct or indirect, with education. Any extension of the powers and functions of the Federal Government was antagonistic to the principles of the Democratic party; and in 1857 the first bill passed by Congress for aiding the state governments to establish colleges for the teaching of agriculture was vetoed by President Buchanan. The bill had been introduced by Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont. Four years later, after the election of Lincoln, and of a new House of Representatives, Morrill reintroduced his bill. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate; and in June 1862 there was enacted the law under which what have since been known as the Land Grant Colleges came into existence.

The Federal Government at that time was much in the position of the Government at Ottawa after it acquired the larger part of the vast territory of the Hudson Bay Company in 1869. It had enormous areas of public land at its disposal; and, with money accruing from these lands, the agricultural colleges, now under the control of the state governments, were founded. By the Act of 1862 each of the then existing states received from the Federal Government a large donation of public land. Representation in the Lower House at Washington is based on population; and under the Morrill Act there was apportioned to each state an area of land equal to thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative in Congress to whom the state was entitled by the apportionment under the census of 1860. As the lands so assigned were sold, the money accruing was directed by the Morrill Act to be invested in bonds of the United States or in state bonds. The money was to form a perpetual fund; and the interest accruing from it was to be applied to the support and maintenance of at least one college in each state,

'where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics,

to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.'

It was specifically provided in another section of the Act of 1862 that no portion of the land grant fund, nor any of the interest accruing from the fund, should be applied, directly or indirectly, under any pretence whatever, to the purchase, erection, preservation or repair of buildings. In establishing a land grant college, a state government might use a sum of money not exceeding ten per cent. of the amount it received, in the purchase of a site for a college, or in the purchase of an experimental farm. Otherwise, by the Morrill Act, and also by four subsequent Acts for aiding the states in promoting the teaching of agriculture, the cost of buildings for agricultural colleges has always been a charge on the states.

Over agricultural colleges established under the Morrill Act the Federal Government had no supervision or control. It was left to the state legislatures to prescribe the course of teaching. There was no audit in the interest of the Federal Government, no examination, test or inspection to ascertain whether the Federal Government, as representing the people of all the states, was getting value for its money. All the duties of a state government to the nation outside its own borders in respect to its agricultural college, largely maintained by the Federal Government, had been discharged when copies of the annual report of the college, 'recording any improvement and experiments made, with their costs and results,' had been forwarded to the Secretary of the Interior at Washington, and also to all the other colleges endowed by the land grants of 1862.

Between 1862, when the Federal Government made possible an agricultural college in every state, and 1914, when the Smith-Lever Act was passed, three additional grants were made to the state agricultural colleges for the extension of their work. The first was in 1887. Congress then passed an Act providing for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connexion with the agricultural colleges. A grant of $15,000 a year

was made to each state for the maintenance of an experiment station. The work to be undertaken was defined in the Act as follows:

'To conduct original researches or verify experiments in the physiology of plants and animals; the diseases to which they are severally subject, with remedies for the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth; the comparative advantages of rotative cropping, as pursued under a varying series of crops; the capacity of new plants or trees for acclimation; the analysis of soils and water; the chemical composition of manures, natural or artificial, with experiments designed to test their comparative effects on crops of different kinds; the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants; the composition and digestibility of the different kinds of food for domestic animals; the scientific and economic questions involved in the production of butter and cheese; and such other researches or experiments bearing directly on the agricultural industry of the United States as may in each case be deemed advisable, having due regard to the varying conditions and needs of the respective states or territories.'

It was under this law of 1887 that, for the first time, the Department of Agriculture at Washington was brought into direct connexion with the work of the agricultural colleges. The connexion was effected by a section of the Act which directs that, in order to secure, so far as possible, uniformity of methods and results in the work of the experiment stations, it shall be the duty of the Secretary of Agriculture to furnish forms for the tabulation of the results of investigations or experiments; to indicate from time to time such lines of enquiry as to him shall seem most important; and in general to furnish such advice and assistance as will best promote the purpose of the Act.

A few years after the experiment stations had been established, the American Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations was organised; and, chiefly at the instance of this association, Congress in 1906 increased the appropriation for each experiment station from $15,000 to $30,000 a year. Earlier than this-in 1890-by what is known as the Nelson Act, an additional annual appropriation was made to each of the Vol. 228.-No. 453.

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