granges, the National Grange, Farmers' Congress, and various agricultural associations-all praying for the support of experiment stations. Many bills purporting to carry out the wishes of petitioners were introduced.

Finally the Hatch bill, which in its general provisions was similar to the Cullen bill, was favorably reported "to give practical direction to agencies which Congress had already created."" This report assumed that the constitutionality of the plan was covered in the objective of general welfare to the whole country. It declared that the departmental experiments in Washington were insufficient for the nation at large, there was nothing sectional in the proposition, and the international competition in agricultural production demanded a system of experimentation that was as effective as those of competing nations. It continued:

Agriculture is so variable in the different States that it is impracticable for one station to cover the field of needed investigation. The cotton and rice States have their climate, their peculiar crops, their insect enemies, and their special problems. The great prairie States have their peculiar wants and difficulties, and so of the several sections. Experiments that are at all reliable can only be performed in the several localities and under their varying conditions. . .

It makes but little difference whether an experiment station is located in Delaware or in Texas, its work is in scientific investigation and its applications to practice. The results of the work done as contemplated by this bill are at once published and communicated to all the others and to the Department here at Washington, so that the work in national. To have so many stations occupied in investigating the questions which interest all agriculturists must produce results which cannot be reached by single institutions or by divided efforts. A discovery by one of these will be accepted and welcomed by all, and will lend new incentives to a generous and active rivalry in all, at the same time that each may have some subject of special interest in its own State. .

The work being done by European stations is equally needed in the United States, and is already begun in obedience to an imperative public demand. The decay of agriculture in the older States, the deterioration of soils in the first-settled group of new States, the rapid absorption of public lands, and the increasing competition of Russia and India in the food markets of the world, have strongly arrested public attention. The conviction has become general that 5949 Cong. 2 sess., H. rep. 848, p. 8.

waste must be checked and productiveness increased. The growth of intelligent interest in this and similar subjects among the agricultural community within the few years past is one of the most striking and hopeful signs of the times. The increase of knowledge on the scientific questions involved in farming and the growing demand for trustworthy information are altogether unprecedented, and every effort to supply the demand seems to stimulate rather than to satisfy it.

Agricultural societies, boards of agriculture, and other organizations have long given important aid in this direction, but the agency which has proved so beneficial abroad has within the last ten years received a remarkable impulse in our own country, and few who have not given this matter special attention can have more than an imperfect idea of the extent to which efforts in this direction have been begun within the period named. . . .

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The principle of national supervision and aid, for which administrators and educators had so long labored, found substantial approval in Congress. Senator George declared that the experiment stations "are really but an extension of the Agricultural Department of the General Government," and that the power to pass the Hatch bill rested upon the same identical power which enabled Congress to establish the Agricultural Department.' Senator Plumb believed it desirable to have one of the agencies of the Department of Agriculture to operate "for the purpose of bringing together in the best possible shape the results of the labors of educated, intelligent men in all the fields that have relation direct or remote" to agriculture, and he desired that the law should "put in the hands of the Secretary of Agriculture a power which he could wield in connection and coöperation with these agencies of the states heretofore endowed by the General Government, the agriculural colleges, to great advantage in the promotion of agriculture.

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Ibid., p. 1081. Senator Plumb further stated, "I have been consenting to this bill and have been desirous of its passage because I wanted to give additional resources to the agricultural colleges, but under the substantial direction as to expenditures of the Department of Agriculture located at the national capital, and one of the great Departments of the National Government, whereby there may be unified and brought together under an intelligent and business supervision and direction all the operations that are to be carried on out of the funds which we shall appropriate."

Signed by President Cleveland, the Hatch bill became the act of March 2, 1887 (24 Stat. L., 440), " to establish agricultural experiment stations in connection with the colleges established in the several States" under the provisions of the act of July 2, 1862. This act provided for the first national system of agricultural experiment stations in the world. Elaborating upon the provisions of previous proposals, the law specified that these stations were " to aid in acquiring and diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects connected with agriculture, and to promote scientific investigation and experiment respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science," the object of the stations being

to conduct original researches or verify experiments on the physiology of plants and animals; the diseases to which they are severally subject, with the remedies for the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth; the comparation of 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 effect on crops of different kinds; the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants; the composition and digesti-. bility 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.

Not only did it provide for experiment stations at the colleges established under the act of 1862, and their supervision and assistance, but their work also supplied the basis for future extension work. The publication of bulletins or reports of progress at least once in three months was made mandatory upon the stations. Copies of these publications were required to be "sent to each newspaper in the states or territories in which they are respectively located, and to such individuals engaged in farming as may request the same, and as far as the means of the station will permit." For these purposes, the postage-free privilege was granted the stations. Within a few months after the enactment of the Hatch Act, another meeting of the representatives of the agricultural institu

tions met in Washington and formed a permanent organization known as the American Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, now known as the American Association of Land Grant Colleges; urged the establishment of a central bureau to carry out the provisions of the Hatch Act; and helped to influence Congress to appropriate funds for such an office.

Consequently, on October 1, 1888, the Secretary of Agriculture established the Office of Experiment Stations, which functioned as a bureau of the Department until 1915, when it became one of the component offices of the newly created States Relations Service, only to be released as a separate unit upon the abolition of the States Relations Service in 1923.

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This completed the plan for the largest scientific agricultural enterprise that any government has undertaken, and in keeping with the enterprise the Commissioner appointed as Director an experienced agricultural scientist. From its foundation, the Office of Experiment Stations was directed successively by former college teachers. The first Director was Dr. Wilbur O. Atwater, who had been director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. He was succeeded in 1891 by Dr. Abram W. Harris, who resigned in 1893. The third Director was Dr. Alfred C. True, who administered the Office throughout the period of its development into the States Relations Service of which he was Director. Upon the reorganization of 1923, he was placed in charge of states relations. work in the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Office of Experiment Stations was continued under the direction of

62 Works other than those previously cited which give some historical pp. 100-06 (1912); Ten Brook, American state universities: a history of agriculture in the United States, in Annual Report, 1866, pp. 498-526; Swank, The department of agriculture: its history and objects; Wanlass, The United States department of agriculture, in Johns Hopkins University, Studies in History and Political Science, Series XXXVIII, No. 1 (1920); True, The United States department of agriculture, in Annals, Vol. XL, pp. 100-06 (1912); Ten Brook, American state universities: a history of congressional land-grants; Brown, The origin of American state universities, in University of California, Publications, 1903; Short, Development of national administrative organization in the United States, 1923.

At the request of the Executive Committee of the Association of Land Grant Colleges the Secretary of Agriculture in 1923 approved a plan for the preparation of monographs on the rise and development of agricultural education, research, and extension work. This work was put in charge of Dr. A. C. True, who had been connected with the educational work of the Department of Agriculture for thirty-five years.

Dr. E. W. Allen, who entered the service of the Department of Agriculture in 1890, and had been Director of the Office while it was a unit of the States Relations Service.

Development of the Office of Experiment Stations: 1887-1915. Within two months after the Commissioner of Agriculture established the Office of Experiment Stations on October 1, 1888, he officially reported that various accessories were needed to develop the Office commensurate with its duties.

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It was imperative that the Office be enabled to serve as a clearing house and an exchange for the stations," and as a medium for the coördination of their efforts. To mediate between the stations and the whole field of science, the Office needed "to collate the results of experimental research in this country and in Europe, and publish them in convenient form for the use of the station workers and others interested in the science of agriculture."

To accomplish this a journal for the stations was needed to contain accounts of their current research, abstracts of similar work in this and in other countries, and other matters of mutual interest." The journal should be "a publication, properly edited, adapted to our special conditions, appearing regularly and giving the latest information, doing for workers in these lines what Die Landwirthschaftlichen Versuchs-Stationen and other journals were doing for the German experiment stations.

To aid in the mediation between the stations and the agricultural public there was immediately needed "a series of farmers' bulletins, which should collate the results of station work bearing upon special topics, and the teachings of other research." To assemble and organize the information pertaining to the results of past research in agriculture, monographs were needed on special subjects. To prepare these publications, the Commissioner insisted that " means ought to be provided for securing the services of the ablest specialists in this country and in Europe."

Another great need which the Commissioner urged in his 1888 annual report was a central experiment station to relieve the state stations" of much costly and laborious scientific work and enable them to devote their energy the more completely to the things that are of practical interest to the farmer, and to enable the Department to give the advice and assistance which Congress calls for and the stations need," and to serve as a useful model of "what an