Given to Nebraska Farmer. August 1915.

My early days were spent on the farm and until I was twenty-five I worked on the farm at least every summer either to make a living or for recreation and health. My first permanent work for the University of Nebraska was along the line of agricultural chemistry in the old laboratory at the city campus before the work had been developed at the University Farm. I had the pleasure of organizing the department of agricultural chemistry at the farm and personally completing the investigations on sorghum poisons and methods for the destruction of prairie dogs. So with my varied experience I feel almost as capable as an agricultural editor of speaking on agricultural topics. The story of agricultural education or perhaps it should be termed agricultural enlightenment becasue we are likely to use the work "education" in a narrow sense of school ing reads like a romance. When the British Royal Society appointed Sir Humphrey Davy chemist of that organization about one hundred years ago he could do little more than give some generalities on oxygen water sunlight and other important factors. In a way the people then knew the value of light ventilation and barnyard manure. They knew that lime was beneficial on some soils and was worthless on others. But as to the whys and wherefores of agriculture they knew nothing. They knew that skill was required in the rearing of domestic animals, but the principles of heredity were unknown and the application of the principles of economics cooperative marketing and a thousand other things of agricultural importance were in their infancy. It would be too long a story to try to trace the tremendous development of agriculture up to the present time. When Leibig discovered the principles of mineral fertilization he made agriculture international - our eastern states are now left without the German potash they need while Germany is suffering from the lack of our phosphorous. For a while it looked as though agriculture might be regarded as almost a chemical subject. Then the relation of bacteria on the roots of leguminous plants to the enrichment of the soil in nitrogen from the air was laid bare. Spraying suppressed baceria and insect diseases. Then it seemed that agriculture was a branch of biology. Later the principles of the movements of water in the ground and soil and discoveries in regard to the mechanical condition of the soil seemed to make agriculture a subdivision of physics. The application of the principle of Mendel's laws to heredity and breeding emphasized again the dependence of agriculture upon biology. In fact agriculture is both an aft and a science depend ing partly on the skill of the workman and partly on the scientific application of certain foundation principles with which he must work to obtain the best results. But agriculture is more important than the developement of an important industry. Most fundamental of all occupations becuase it is the basis of food and clothing agriculture concerns the whole people quite as much as those who draw their support directly from the land. Hence the development of agriculture has become a matter of national importance. Some of our historians claim that the reason for the decline of the civilization of Greece and later of Italy was the languishment of agriculture. Certainly we have in recent times examples of enormous national development through better agriculture. Thus when it became a part of Bismark's imperial policy to take from Denmark the province of Schleswig-Holstein the Danes determined to found schools of agriculture and recover from the barren heath lands as much fertile soil as they had lost to Prussia on the south. And through the energy of the people that was quickly done. The Danes now have more fertile land than they had prior to their loss. Another striking instance of the importance of the development of agriculture is seen in Germany itself. Although Germany now has perhaps 75 per cent more people than at the founding of the empire it actually requires less foodstuffs from abroad than at that time. In other words by developing and extending their agriculture the Germans are less dependent on foreign countries than before their great cities devoted to manufacturing arose. If Germany wins in the present war one of the prime factors in her success would be that her agriculture was on such a basis that the difficulty of bringing in foreign foodstuffs was not a serious handicap. Up to this point I have purposely avoided using illustrations from the United States. Our agriculture is too new and in some respects too crude for an accurate comparison. Our enormous agricultural development has been due in large part to the bringing into cultivation of new land. That has now practically ceased. We are passing from the pioneer to the scientific era of agriculture and it is the province of the schools colleges and experiment stations to accelerate this transition. It is easy for a boomer to claim that he has accomplished much. Such and such a thing was done and something followed. We can easily place figures together in the position of cause and result. But with all due allowance I think I can say that the Nebraska Experiment Station has done much to help the people of the state by showing the desirability of sowing early varieties of oats such as the Kherson and better strains of wheat by showing the value of a more nearly balanced ration for livestock by encouraging a better appreciation of the value of alfalfa by showing the value in certain sections of drouth-resisting crops and in many other ways. When we consider that in addition to the things I have mentioned the school of agriculture is now turning out one hundred practical farmers every year and that the college of agriculture is turning out a goodly grist of highly trained agricultural specialists we cannot question that the leaven is working in this state. It is perhaps not out of place to relate here some of the things that have been done in the university of Nebraska in the interests of agriculture since January 1, 1909, when I took up the work of my present position; and in this I am not claiming for myself, I trust, an excessive amount of credit. The agricultural papers have supported the work; farmers in the legislature have favored it; the dean and professors in the school and college of agriculture have been singularly devoted; the regents have given it cordial support. Therefore, I am merely summing up a few things that have been accomplished through the efforts of many. Six years ago there were ten professors in agriculutral subjects and four instructors. There are now thirty-four professors and sixteen instructors. That is, more than three times as many persons are now giving instruction in agricultural subjects in the university as at the beginning of 1909. Up to six years ago the college of agriculture, which was organized in the early days, had been submerged in the industrial college. In the session of the legislature of 1909 a bill, drawn under my direction and introduced and pushed by Representative Otto Kotouc of Richardson county, was passed that reorganised the university and named the college of agriculture as one of its colleges. The school of agriculture as a part of the industrial college had long been in existence. In 1909 there were 348 students in the six months' course. The latest complete record shows an enrollment of 515. The number of students registered in the college of agriculture in the first year of its separation from the industrial college was 23. In the past year the registration was 468. This rapid development of agriculture in the university has of course cost a good deal of money. Part of this has come through specific appropriation made by the legislature and part through the use by the board of regents of the general funds of the university. From the records I learn that since 1909 the special activities of an agricultural nature provided for by legislative appropriations have risen from $33,900 to approximately $120,000 per biennium. The appropriation for farmers' institutes for instance in 1907 was $20,000. Now the work of agricultural extension recieves state support amounting to $50,000. In other words the special agricultural activities for which specific appropriations are made by the legislature are now more than four times as well supported as they were seven years ago. Of more interest to the people of Nebraska perhaps may be a statement of how much money the regents have spent for agri culture out of of those funds whih can be handled somewhat at their own discretion. I use the work "somewhat" advisedly. The federal funds for the support of instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts may be used as the regents sees fit within certain limitations. Some of these limitations are quite specific others hardly exist. The university has endowment funds and federal grants to the amount of approximately $180,000 a biennium. Under the terms of the federal grants approximately $30,000 of this belongs to the university proper. The balance $150,000 in other states is usually divided equally between agriculture and mechnic arts (engineering). Massachusetts splits her funds between the agricultural college and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Nebraska however this money is so divided that $114,600 is spent at the University Farm whereas to keep faith with the federal government we would be under moral obligations to spend only about $75,000 there. When the bill was passed in 1899 to make a permanent levy of 1 mill for the support of the university no one thought of the agricultural development that would take place at the farm. In the first few years of the existence of this levy only a few thousand dollars annually were spent there. Now the regents entirely of their own volition spend at the farm over $120,000 a biennium. At the city campus approximately four and one-half times as much instructional work is done at the farm campus. The regents are trying to provide adequately for the needs of both places but they are actually spending considerably more per student hour at the farm than at the city campus. They have been more generous too in stenographic help and telephone service at the farm than with the corresponding departments downtown. The object of the regents in all this is to make the facilities at the farm available to the utmost to the people of the state. One may fairly ask if the results obtained are commensurate with the expidenture of funds. This may be answered partly by referring to the number of bulletins issued by the experiment station. Prior to 1909 the total number of bulletins issued by the station and associated activities in the forty odd years of the existence of the institution was only 108. Since January 1 1909 the college and station have issued 151 bulletins. That is attempts to help farmers through publications have been nearly one and one-half times as numerous since 1909 as in the entire history of the university previous to that time. The first contract to be let from the new building fund at the farm is for the diary building. The dairy department has always been strong. Adequately housed its strength will increase. The next building at the farm to be used for teaching will be that of the agricultural engineering department. It is known that this department has sent out at least as many professors of agricultural engineering as any similar one in the United States and perhaps more. Adequate housing of the department will be a great advantage to the station. It is true of course that rapid growth large numbers of students big departments pretentious buildings and large droves of livestock do not make a college. The criticism may perhaps be made that in some neighboring states agricultural colleges while intensely alive have been a little too materialistic. They have sometimes neglected the finer things of life and there has been in the rapidly developing departments too keen a desire for position and advancement. From these misfortunes we have been in the main spared in the past and we belive that we will be spared in the future. The associaion of the work in agriculture with the rest of the university from the very beginning has been I believe the reason why we have been to such an extent free from the con ditions to which I have just referred. Both parts of the institution have gained by the association. Agricultural college work puts life and vigor into the academic side and the academic colleges repay the debt by surrounding agricultural work with cultural influence and intellectual refinement. I feel therefore that the development of the University of Nebraska in the future will not be less along lines of production but that there will be added to it thoughts of the inner life studies in psychlogy and economics in the relations of farmers to their fellow citizens in the towns. From our agricultural colleges will go forth men to lead in worthy agricultural movements. We shall be gainers not only in the science of agriculture but in the philosphy of agriculture as well. Gratifying then as the recent growth of the agri cultural activities of the University has been we may look confidently for a finer and larger development in the years that are to come.