tutes. The boards, commissioners and societies all publish reports and bulletins and many of them accomplish a great deal of admirable educational work.

The Patrons of husbandry (Grange) and National farmers' alliance are organizations with many subordinate branches and local societies and have exerted great influence especially in educating the farmers and their families. The Farmers' national congress meets once a year for the discussion of questions of general interest. For the stock interests, we have in this country a national live stock association, five national dairy unions, and fifty-six state dairy associations. There are fourteen cattle breeders associations representing the interests of as many different important breeds, eighteen horse breeders associations, twenty-nine sheep breeders associations, seventeen associations of swine breeders, etc. Nearly all of the states protect their stock from diseases through the agency of sanitary boards or veterinarians under the direction of the state boards or commissioners.

There is a national league for good roads that is doing much to educate public opinion. Ten states have forestry commissions or provide for forest protection and improvement in some way. There are besides eighteen forestry associations which are doing much educational work. Eleven national or interstate, and fifty-four state horticultural and kindred societies are at work. (For the names of these societies and the addresses of their officers, see the Year. book of the United States department of agriculture for 1898.)

THE RISE OF AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS

The origin and development of agricultural schools in America was a part of a general educational movement against the old classical college and in favor of scientific and technical education. Perhaps the demand for agricultural education was the first one to be heard; but it had its origin in the same causes which gave rise to the demand for the application of science to all the arts and professions in life. As the great universities of Europe grew out of monastic

and cathedral schools, so our first American colleges were all the children of the churches. The preachers were in the early days almost the only learned men, and therefore the only teachers. In the case of the rural schools the preacher was both school director and teacher. The institutions for higher education were also founded and controlled by the associations and presbyteries of the different denominations, and the most learned of their clergy became the instructors. Naturally enough, as their founders and teachers were all preachers, these early colleges were devoted almost exclusively to the cultivation of theology, classics and philosophy. Their parson-teachers taught what they held to be the only thing worth learning, and they were right in putting character and culture above everything else. Their methods produced a race of preachers, teachers, lawyers, statesmen, and soldiers scarcely equalled and never surpassed in any country. But a new and rapidly growing country like America needed engineers, chemists, miners, and manufacturers, and an ambitious and intelligent people were not slow to make their wants heard.

Some of the physical sciences, notably chemistry and geology, had already made great progress, and had revolutionized some of the arts. The popular writings of great scientific men, notably Liebig's Letters on chemistry, were eagerly read, and people everywhere cherished bright hopes of the benefits to be derived from the application of science to the industries of life, and especially to agriculture. Discovery and invention were already doing much to develop the material resources of the world and to change the occupations of men. Steam was beginning to be used for the purpose of transportation, chemistry was being applied in working iron, in dyeing fabrics, and in many other arts. Great railroads were to be built, but with the exception of the military academy at West Point, there was no school to train the engineers to survey them. Mines of coal and iron were to be opened, but miners had to be imported to open them. Factories needed to be built, but engineers

had to be brought over from England or Holland to build them. Iron works and many other important industries were calling loudly for chemists, who had to be obtained from Germany or France. These influences, but more especially the need of scientific knowledge in a rapidly developing country, produced a profound effect on the theories and practice of education; and thus a vigorous demand arose for the sciences and their applications to the arts of life. The old college was not meeting the new demands; but what the new college was to be, and what its methods, no one knew for a long time.

Columbia college, in the city of New York, appointed, in 1792, Samuel L. Mitchell "professor of natural history, chemistry and agriculture." The records of the college do not show what instruction he gave in agricultural science, if any, but Professor Mitchell, so far as we know, was, by title at least, the first professor of agriculture in America. We are told that he prepared a number of essays on manures and other subjects for the New York society for the promotion of agriculture, and that his influence in behalf of the sciences related to agriculture was very evident in the men he trained. Many of them became prominent in science, and some were influential in the movement for agricultural schools.

The Philadelphia Society for the promotion of agriculture, of which Washington was an honorary member, appointed a committee on January 21, 1794, "to prepare a plan for establishing the State society for the promotion of agriculture, connecting with it the education of youth in the knowledge of that most important art." This committee made a report offering several alternative propositions for promoting agricultural education. One suggestion made. was "the endowment of professorships to be annexed to the University of Pennsylvania and the College of Carlisle, and other seminaries of learning, for the purpose of teaching the chemical, philosophical and elementary arts of the theory of agriculture." Another suggestion was to use the common

etc.

school system of the state to educate the farmer in his business, "the county school masters being made secretaries of the county societies, and the school houses the places of meeting and the repositories of their transactions, models, The legislature may enjoin on these school masters the combination of the subject of agriculture with other parts of education." This is, so far as we know, the first formal effort made in the United States to present the claims of agricultural education to a legislature and to incorporate instruction in agriculture in the common schools.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

The war with England, the expansion of territory, the rapid development of manufacturing and many other causes, contributed to retard the progress of agricultural education for several decades after the beginning of the century. The agitation continued, but little was accomplished until after 1840.

Upon the motion of Elkanah Watson, the Berkshire agricultural society of Massachusetts presented in 1817 a memorial to congress praying for "the establishment of a national board of agriculture in accordance with the original suggestion of President Washington." The bill reported in the house of representatives was promply defeated by a large vote. It was well known that President Madison was opposed to it on constitutional grounds. Others based their opposition on the indifference of the farmers of the country and the idea that such a board was not needed.

The only striking event in the agricultural history of the country during the next decade was the agitation of silk culture, commonly called the "Morus multicaulis" from the variety of the mulberry tree which was introduced everywhere to supply food for the silk worm. Congress responded to the popular demand for information on this subject by ordering the preparation and publication of a manual of silk culture, which was done.

The United States department of agriculture grew finally out of the recommendation of President Washington for a national board of agriculture, but more immediately out of the seed distribution originated in the department of state during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. The patent office was first in the hands of the department of state, and the seeds collected by consuls in various parts of the world were turned over to it, as the scientific branch of the government, for distribution. So it came about that when on the 4th of July, 1836, the patent office was made a separate bureau and Henry L. Ellsworth, a practical farmer of Connecticut, was appointed commissioner, he found it one of his duties to distribute seeds and plants. It was a congenial duty and one for which he was well qualified both by education and experience. During his travels over the country as Indian commissioner, Mr. Ellsworth had been deeply impressed with the agricultural possibilities of the western prairies and also with the great ignorance and destitution of the settlers upon them. He believed that what they needed was better implements and seeds adapted to the climate and soils. So deeply impressed was he with the necessities of these people that, without the authority of congress and outside of business hours, he collected seeds and plants, which he distributed to farmers in all sections of the country, but especially to those in the far west, using the postal franks of members of congress for this purpose. This was the beginning of the seed distribution by the United States government, which has since grown to such colossal proportions. Thus also was born the United States department of agriculture. In his first annual report Mr. Ellsworth begged earnestly for an appropriation to continue and enlarge this distribution of seeds and one was made during the last days of the twenty-fifth congress which provided $1,000 from the patent office fund "for the purpose of collecting and distributing seeds, prosecuting agricultural investigations, and procuring agricultural statistics." With the exception of the years 1840, 1841 and 1846 congress made a small appropriation for this purpose each