President John Quincy Adams evidently had in mind an agency akin to the Office of Experiment Stations when on December 6, 1825, he suggested in his first annual message to Congress that if the constitutional powers "may be effectually brought into action by laws promoting the improvement of agriculture" and other arts, it "would be treachery to the most sacred of trusts" if Congress should refrain from exercising those powers" for the benefit of the people themselves."

Probably the earliest public plan for a national institution to perform the activities of the present Office of Experiment Stations was that proposed in 1820 by Elkanah Watson of Massachusetts. The plan not only suggested a modern national clearing house of agricultural information but also an experimental farm, with the attendant extension work and district or county agent assistance. He insisted that "a board of agriculture" without any reference to any particular state "ought to be considered, as in France, one of the public departments," and that “it should be supported at public expense, as much as any other public office," its function being:

To hold an active communication with all the county societies in this State, as well as in other states, and in Europe.

To correspond with all our foreign consuls, in a view of obtaining from every country what may be useful to our own.

For the reception and distribution of valuable seeds, plants, and essays, and eventually books, on husbandry and the arts.

For the receipt and distribution of valuable implements of agriculture.

For the receipt of reports from county societies, and the compilation of an annual volume.

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We will suppose a farm containing from one hundred acres of land, in the vicinity of Albany, to belong to the state, under the director of agriculture, and containing a variety of soil, and a permanent flowing stream of water. On this farm we will suppose erected suitable buildings to accommodate one hundred persons, and several work shops, for the construction of farming utensils. Place this establishment under the superintendence of a professor of agriculture, with suitable assistants. Here to be deposited plants, shrubs, grain, trees, etc., to undergo experiments to establish their congeniality to our soil, and climate. Here also the best

Ibid., p. 183. Exhibits and cattle shows are also considered. See also, Dean, A biographical sketch of Elkanah Watson, 1864, pp. 10-11.

improved implements of husbandry will be introduced and made. New inventions will be tested, and models of such as shall deserve a preference will be sent to the county societies. Also the best plan for rural architects; the best seasons for sowing crops tested, by experiments, the most approved fences, and the best kind of domestic animals, will all come within the duties of this important institution, as well as experiments on manures, the best method of creating and preserving them. In a word, all that relates to practical husbandry, in connection with chemistry, horticulture, botany, and minerology. The most useful part of the system, will be the education of twenty young men yearly, for one year, from each of the four great political districts of this state, at the expense of the agricultural fund, to be recommended by presidents of county societies. These students to be formed into classes, and taught agriculture, in all its branches, as well in theory as in practice. They must however, severally engage to labor on said farm as practical farmers, at least three hours in each day, when so required by the professor, and to conform, in all respects, to the rules and ordinances of said institution. Let it be made the duty of these students to be attached the ensuing year to some respectable academy, or school, in their respective districts, under the superintendence of the county societies. In these subordinate schools, let the youth be furnished with some cheap books on the first elements of agriculture, and chemistry, adapted to their capacities, and taught as a branch of their education.

[The State might] be subdivided into ten agricultural districts, and a branch be established in each, under the superintendence of men who shall have been educated, at least for one or two years, at the primary institution. In the process of time, under the operation of this benign system (and I hazard nothing in venturing a prophecy that it will take place) the great mass of our citizens will become scientific farmers." 15

This educational movement soon crystallized the idea of collegiate instruction as well as of a national clearing house of agricultural information. Although Congress never carried out completely Washington's suggestions, and although Thomas Jefferson opposed the maintenance of even a national military academy on constitutional grounds, it is obviously no mere coincidence that in 1862 Congress did establish both the Department of Agriculture and the system of land grants to agricultural colleges while the nation was at war. Neither may it have been a mere coincidence that the land grants were given to those state universities which

15 Watson, from his brief essay "On the institution of a pattern farm,” in his History, etc., of the Western canals, separately paged.

in a measure represented Washington's ideals of both classical and military education, and that these very land-grant colleges soon created a need for the "common center to stimulate "enterprise and experiment" which Washington advocated and which the Office of Experiment Stations and coördinate offices later supplied. Development of Agricultural Colleges with Government Relations. For urging the establishment of agricultural colleges, credit is given to many of the students of Professor Samuel L. Mitchell, who began teaching agriculture at Columbia College in the city of New York in 1792 and later exerted political as well as academic influence while a member of Congress. Coöperative relations between the educational institutions and the farmers such as is now fostered by the Office of Experiment Stations, were likewise early attempted by the societies in Pennsylvania. In 1794 the Philadelphia society appointed a committee "to prepare outlines of a plan for establishing a State Society for the promotion of agriculture, connecting with it the education of youth in the knowledge of that most important art, while they are acquiring other useful knowledge suitable for the agricultural citizens of the State."" Among the alternatives for promoting agricultural education which the committee presented to the legislature was the suggestion that professorships might be endowed and annexed to the University of Pennsylvania, Dickinson College, and other institutions, "for the purpose of teaching the chemical, philosophical, and elementary parts of the theory of agriculture." It was believed that the common school system of the state might be made to contribute to the technical education of the farmer and that the country schoolmasters might be " secretaries of the county societies, and the schoolhouses the places of meeting and the repositaries of their transactions." The committee recommended that the legislature "enjoin on these schoolmasters the combination of the subject of agriculture with the other parts of education," suggesting that the essays of their own experimentalists and the proceedings of the society would afford a part of the text-book information.

The Massachusetts society was similarly active in 1801, when it considered a proposition for an endowment of a botanic garden

16 True, in Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1894, p. 82.

and a professorship of natural history at Harvard College, and three years later its ideals were partially realized.

Agricultural fairs were suggested at this time, but they were not extended very widely until later.

Forming a strong background for future courses in agriculture and extension work were the collections of books which had been gathered immediately after the Revolutionary War in the college libraries at Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Columbia, Dickinson, Princeton, Rutgers, and the University of Pennsylvania. The agricultural societies also collected fugitive papers on farming and began to publish them in book form. Soon exchanges with other libraries in Europe augmented the accumulation of books so that not only the college libraries but the public and private institutions as well maintained sufficient material to be utilized in agricultural study.

Coincident with this organization of teachable knowledge was the inevitable development of the kind of formal education in which the Office of Experiment Stations is interested. The first bona fide agricultural school that was established in the United States was a farm school on Thompson's Island near Boston, which was opened in 1804 and is still in operation."

But an institution nearer the type that now involves the Office of Experiment Stations was proposed by Simeon DeWitt in his "Consideration on the necessity of establishing an agricultural college," which appeared in 1819 when he agitated the founding of "The Agricultural College of the State of New York." During this same year an academy was founded at Norwich, Vermont, which offered mechanical, agricultural, and military courses. In 1824 an agricultural department was organized at Trinity (then Washington) College in Connecticut, to include military instruction somewhat on the future land-grant college plan.

The idea of the modern "agricultural and mechanical " college was accepted by the Maine legislature of 1821 when it provided for an annual grant of one thousand dollars for the maintenance of instruction for farmers and mechanics at the Gardner Lyceum. Here was supported a professor of agriculture and a practical farm, and in the winter special short courses were given.

" Beal, History of the Michigan agricultural college, p. 4.

The establishment of a professorship of agriculture at the University of Virginia was attempted in 1822 by an agricultural society of which James Madison was president. Madison indicated the collegiate importance of the subject when he wrote to other agricultural societies that chemistry "could not fail to be auxiliary to a professorship having lessons on agriculture for its essential charge." "Three years later, the Massachusetts legislature received a memorial from the town of Stockbridge, paying for the endowment of "an institution best calculated to afford instruction to laborious classes in practical arts and sciences." The legislative committee to which the memorial was referred submitted two reports in 1826 and a third report in 1827, accompanied by a bill to establish the Massachusetts Seminary of Arts and Sciences." 1o In a message to the New Hampshire legislature of 1828, the governor suggested a "state experimental farm and Agricultural School," and sixteen years later the trustees of Dartmouth College declared that education more particularly adapted to agricultural pursuits was needed."

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For "a course in practical agriculture at Harvard College, Benjamin Bussey bequeathed two hundred acres and a sum of money in 1835, and two years later the Massachusetts legislature authorized an agricultural survey to be made of the state so that means of improvement might be pointed out." In 1836, the New York legislature passed "an Act to incorporate the New York State Agricultural School" to include instruction in mechanic arts -but financial aid was not granted.

These developments tended to bring the colleges and the farmers into a common relationship, and to establish the need of a central medium of exchange.

Conforming to the Ordinance of 1787, which declared that knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the increase of education shall forever be encouraged," the states that were formed in the Northwest Territory and the trans-Mississippi region reserved of the public lands

18

Quoted by True, in Yearbook, 1899, p. 163.

19 Massachusetts Resolves, VI, pp. 381, 379; also H. doc. 5 and S. doc. 23 of 2 sess., 1826-27.

20

Lord, History of Dartmouth college, 1815-1909, p. 293.

21 Massachusetts. Session laws, 1837, p. 554.