XIII

WHAT THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT IS DOING TO PROMOTE THE SAFETY AND

P

HAPPINESS OF THE PEOPLE

OSSIBLY no other great activity of our purposive

government is as striking and unique as the work

of our Department of Agriculture. This department was our own stupendous application of our principle of putting Uncle Sam into business for the people. The need of the people of the country was great. Their most important industry was being carried on in a wasteful and unscientific way, but in such small units that individuals could not help themselves. The purpose of this branch of the government was to ensure the general welfare and the blessings of liberty and the safety and happiness of all the people and of their posterity.

In a small way some of the colonial governments had tried to encourage the breeding of silkworms and sheep, and the growing of hops and indigo, but these had been lost sight of at or before the Revolution. Long before the Department of Agriculture was formed, United States consuls and naval officers abroad were sending home seeds and cuttings, and were aiding in finding and sending to us new breeds of domestic animals. These matters drifted into the hands of the Commissioner of Patents, then an official of the Department of State. In 1817 Congress gave certain lands in the then Mississippi Territory to French immigrants to aid "in growing the vine and olive,” and in 1838, in Florida, for growing cer

tain useful tropical plants. After much discussion in and out of Congress, an appropriation of $1,000, (to be taken from the surplus funds of the Patent Office!) was made in 1839 for "the collection of agricultural statistics and for other agricultural purposes." Thereafter, as the department says in one of its bulletins, "on its legal side, the department, like Topsy, has 'just growed.'" It furnishes a fine example of how we have often put the government to work in many sociological and economic fields; for many branches of the department's activities have never been specifically authorized by statute, but have been merely mentioned in clauses in appropriation acts. Work in these branches would immediately cease if Congress should omit the appropriation in any one

year.

The work of the Department of Agriculture is so vast, so intricate and so far reaching that we have space only to quote from or paraphrase some of its own statements as to its operations. These merely suggest how this department directly or indirectly enters into the life of every man, woman and child in the land, through food, drink, raiment, medicines, sports, safety and livelihood.

There was a preliminary period when small appropriations were made to investigate and report upon cotton, flax and hemp, collect statistics, and purchase and distribute seeds. In 1862-the same year that the Homestead Law was passed-the Department of Agriculture, with a Commissioner of Agriculture, under the Department of the Interior, was authorized and organized. The next twenty-seven years were its formative period, in which new activities were placed upon the department; but always there is constant recognition, as in few other phases of our government, that work for all the people was the object or purpose of the department, which was

seeking honestly and in an open-minded way to give effect to that purpose. There can be no question that every act of the department belongs to the purposive side of the government, and is for the people.

Under the Act of 1862, the department's duties were

"to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information connected with the subject of agriculture, in the most general and comprehensive sense of the word, and to procure, propagate and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants."

In the first seventy-eight years of our government, Congress appropriated less than $430,000 for agriculture. Its total appropriations through 1917 have been $394,703,246.86.

This money was not spent to conduct the government, to govern the people; but to aid them, to carry out the objects of the government.

The Department of Agriculture seeks to do its work for and among the people by carrying on its activities through the following subdivisions:

The Office of Farm Management investigates and encourages the adoption of improved methods of farm management and farm practice and studies the clearing of "logged-off" lands, with a view to their utilization for agricultural and dairying purposes.

Weather Bureau. Prior to 1862 the study of our climate and storms was encouraged by several departments and by the Smithsonian Institution, and information thereon was included, as agricultural statistics, in reports of the Commissioner of Patents. Meteorological data gathered by the Smithsonian observers were published in the monthly reports of the Department of Agriculture from 1863 to 1872, when Congress made an

appropriation to enable the Signal Office of the War Department to take observations and report on storms for the benefit of agriculture and commerce. This work was transferred in 1890 to the Weather Bureau in the Department of Agriculture. This bureau forecasts the weather, issues storm warnings, displays weather and flood signals for the benefit of agriculture, commerce and navigation, gauges and reports on rivers, maintains and operates seacoast telegraph lines, collects and transmits marine intelligence for the benefit of commerce and navigation, reports temperature and rainfall conditions for the cotton interests, displays frost and cold-wave signals, distributes meteorological information in the interest of agriculture and commerce, takes meteorological observations to establish and record the climatic conditions of the United States, and, in general, makes investigations in meteorology, climatology, seismology, evaporation and aerology.

The Bureau of Animal Industry is primarily concerned with the promotion of the country's live-stock and meat industries. It conducts scientific investigations of the causes, prevention and treatment of diseases of domestic animals; investigates the actual existence of communicable diseases of such animals, and aids in their control and eradication; and carries on investigations and experiments in the dairy industry, animal husbandry, and the feeding and breeding of animals, including poultry and ostriches.

The Bureau of Plant Industry conducts investigations of the causes, prevention and treatment of diseases of plants, including fruit, ornamental, shade and forest trees; crop physiology and breeding; soil bacteriology; plant nutrition; soil fertility; acclimatization and adaptation of crop plants introduced from tropical regions; drugs and poisonous plants; plant physiology and fer

mentation; crop technology; fiber plants; biophysics; seed testing; plants suitable for paper making; the improvement and production of cereals; alkali and droughtresistant crops; economic and systematic botany; the improvement and utilization of wild plants and grazing lands; dry-land agriculture; western irrigation; the utilization of land reclaimed under the reclamation act and other areas in the arid and semi-arid regions; pomology; horticulture; the introduction of foreign seeds and plants; forage crops; cotton; tobacco; flax; broom corn; sugar beets; and sugar-cane syrup. This bureau also has charge of the department's experimental gardens and grounds, the experimental farm at Arlington, Va., and the annual governmental distribution of seeds.

The Forest Service investigates methods for wood distillation; preservative treatment of timber and timber testing; testing of woods to ascertain if they be suitable for paper making; of foreign woods of commercial importance to our industries; investigates and experiments as to economy in the use of forest products; range conditions within the national forests and elsewhere on the public range; methods for improving the range by reseeding, regulation of grazing, and other means; seeding and tree planting within the national forests; silvicultural, dendrological and other experiments and investigations as to best methods for conservative management of forests and forest lands; estimating and appraising of timber and other resources on the national forests; and miscellaneous forest investigations.

The first forest reservation was created in California in 1890. Previously Congress had passed various acts for the protection, use and disposal of the timber and timbered lands of the United States. In 1817 public lands containing live oak and red cedar timber for the use of