This diagram presents in graphic detail the values of the various products of agriculture and the proportions of each that are exported, on the basis of the production of 1886, and the exportation of the fiscal year ended June 30, 1887. It shows that American agricultural exports are practically confined to the two industrial products-cotton and tobacco, and to meats, cereals, and cheese. One might use the word "wheat" instead of “cereals," as less than 4 per cent of maize is exported, and very little of barley or rye, and no buckwheat. In fact, more than ten bushels of barley is imported for every bushel exported. Our exports, then, are cotton and tobacco and bread and meats, and the farm value of all exports is about one-tenth of the total value of all production.

The rates of wages of agricultural labor, as averaged from returns to the Division of Statistics of the Department of Agriculture, are on the basis of monthly salaries for the year, without board-the laborer furnishing his own board. It was higher in 1866 and 1869, because of currency inflation, and lower than the average in 1879, the time of culmination of the monetary depression which began to be operative in the latter part of 1873. After the return to specie payments, in 1879, prices of products, and soon the rate of wages, rose to their natural level.

The general average for 1888 is $18.24, equal to 218.88, or about $220 per annum in round numbers. This includes the labor of freedmen in the South, which reduces the average below that of white labor in the country, the average for the Southern States being $14.54 against $22.22 for the Western States. That of the Middle and Eastern States is still higher. The average for white labor of Northern States might be fairly stated at $275 per annum.

The balance of trade was against the United States from 1845 to 1875, inclusive, with only four exceptional years, and the net excess of imports of merchandise amounted to $1,532,943,439, an annual average of $49,449,788.

The prosperity of the country at length caused a turn of the tide, and from 1876 to 1887, inclusive, there was an unbroken series of favorable balances, making an aggregate excess of exports of $1,612,659,755, and an annual average of $134,388,313. In 1888 there was an excess of imports of $28,002,607.

A statement by decades shows the rapid development of external commerce:

This table of nutritive equivalents of a large number of American and European dietaries was prepared under the direction of Prof. W. O. Atwater, director of the division of experiment stations in the Department of Agriculture.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A REPORT ON THE HISTORY AND PRESENT CONDITION OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE AND EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

By A. C. TRUE.

The movement for the promotion of agricultural science and education in the United States has reached that period when it seems about to reap the fruits of the labors of the pioneers and to enter into a vast heritage of popular favor and golden opportunities for usefulness. The centennial celebrations of the great events in the early history of this nation have awakened in the minds of our people a deep consciousness of the enormous possibilities that are involved in the material resources of the country, but they have also brought into bold relief before the public eye the fact that our resources are not limitless, and that the ever-increasing rapidity of our growth in population will ere long bring us face to face with that problem of how to find food for the hungry which has proved so troublesome to older peoples and civilizations. The general diffusion of elementary education, the overcrowding of those occupations for which the ordinary training of the schools suffices, the abolishment of the apprentice system by which the youths were prepared to become skilled laborers, the complications introduced into almost every pursuit by the use of machinery and the application of scientific principles, the employment of women in numerous industries once open only to men, have pressed home the fact that every year it is more certain that the possession of the ordinary school education will not insure a livelihood to the willing and industrious worker; that when the youth has once chosen his occupation he must have an opportunity to prepare himself for it by special technical training; that the man who has neither the general nor the technical training of the schools, while he may escape the poorhouse by unremitting toil as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, cannot hope to have those comfortable surroundings and those opportunities for social advancement which every right-minded American citizen claims for himself and for his children. And while these ideas have become more or less clearly aroused in the minds of average citizens, statesmen and moralists have become alarmed lest the mass of native and foreign ignorance which slavery and immigration have entailed upon the Republic prove too heavy an incubus for its free institutions, and have, therefore, given increasing attention to schemes for popular education in the sciences and arts. Moreover, the astonishing results which in recent years have come from the application of scientific principles to the useful arts have shown to scientists their privilege and obligation to make their investigations contribute to the welfare of mankind; hence they are more ready than ever before to bend their energies to the

working out of the practical problems which confront the business man and the farmer, and, having this disposition, they find themselves every year with more to offer for the satisfaction of the demand for knowledge that can be immediately utilized. It should also not be forgotten that the discussion of economical and ethical questions involved in the relations of capital and labor has more clearly revealed the truth that in the body politic we are members one of another, and that "if one member suffers all the members suffer with it," and that, while there must be such freedom of activity and such friendly rivalry of enterprise as shall stimulate the highest and best capabilities of the individual, there must also be that yielding of personal desires and that coöperation in labors for the common welfare which shall enable the great community we call our country to secure for all its members a high average of intelligence, wealth, and happiness. The general facts thus briefly stated obviously have a special application to the movement for the promotion of agriculture. Until very recently farming has been generally regarded as an occupation that could be carried on with unskilled labor, and even now the mass of men engaged in this pursuit are unable to see how any technical knowledge of practical value can be given to their children in the schools, and are inclined to look upon scientific experiments in agriculture as vain attempts to change the methods of a calling which has remained substantially the same in its operations since the beginning. But the leaven of modern restlessness and desire for improvement is rapidly working its way into the masses of our agricultural population and making a wondrous change in the attitude of the average farmer toward agricultural schools, experiment stations, farmers' institutes, agricultural societies, newspapers, and all other means for his improvement as a skilled workman and a good citizen. At this juncture it would be an interesting and helpful thing to trace the growth of this movement in the United States from its inception, for this historical survey would add another proof that the times are ripe for the general diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge among our farmers. Unfortunately, the materials for a thorough treatment of this history have never been collated, but it nevertheless seems best to attempt a rough sketch of the movement as a preface to a report on the present condition of public institutions already established here for the promotion of agricultural science and education.

As far as is now known, the first society for promoting agriculture in the United States was established at Philadelphia, then the seat of the General Government, March 1, 1785, by men who were for the most part engaged in pursuits having no immediate connection with agriculture. On the 4th of July, 1785, Gen. Washington was elected an honorary member of this society and ever afterwards showed a deep interest in its proceedings. Benjamin Franklin's name is also found on the list of its honorary members. In the same year a similar society was formed in South Carolina, which had among its objects the establishment of an experimental farm. The New York Agricultural Society was organized February 26, 1791, and about the same time a society was formed at Kennebec, Massachusetts (now Maine). The Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture was incorporated March 7, 1792, and in 1794 the Western Society of Middlesex Husbandmen was formed in Massachusetts, though not incorporated until 1803. On the 21st of January, 1794, a committee was appointed by the Philadelphia society "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." The committee made a report, in which several alternatives for promoting agricultural education were presented to the legislature: "Whether by endowing 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 parts of the theory of agriculture; or by adding to

the funds of the society, increase their ability to propagate a knowledge of the subject, and stimulate, by premiums and other incentives, the exertions of the agricultural citizens; or whether by a combination of these means the welfare of the State may be more effectually promoted."

It was also a part of the plan to make the common-school system of the State contributory to the technical education of the farmer. "The country schoolmasters may be secretaries of the county societies, and the schoolhouses the places of meeting and repositories of their transactions, models, etc. The legislature may enjoin on these schoolmasters the combination of the subject of agriculture with the other parts of education. This may be easily effected by introducing as school books those on this subject, and thereby making it familiar to their pupils. These will be gaining a knowledge of the business they are destined to follow, while they are taught the elementary parts of their education. Books thus profitable to them in the common affairs of life may be substituted for some of those now used, and they can easily be obtained. Selections from the best writers in husbandry may be made by the society. The essays of our own experimentalists or theorists, and the proceedings of the society, will also afford information."

This report seems to have been the first formal attempt made in the United States to urge the claims of agricultural education and experimentation upon the attention of a law-making body.

Two years later, on the 7th of December, 1796, in his annual message to the second session of the Fourth Congress, Washington shows his interest in the subject by the following recommendation :

It will not be doubted that, with reference either to individual or national welfare, agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as nations advance in population and other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent, and renders the cultivation of the soil more and more an object of public patronage. Institutions for promoting it grow up, supported by the public purse; and to what object can it be dedicated with greater propriety? Among the means which have been employed to this end, none have been attended with greater success than the establishment of boards, composed of public characters, charged with collecting and diffusing information, and enabled by premiums and small pecuniary aid to encourage and assist a spirit of discovery and improvement. This species of establishment contributes doubly to the increase of improvements by stimulating to enterprise and experiment, and by drawing to a common center the results everywhere of individual skill and observation, and spreading them thence over the whole nation. Experience accordingly has shown that they are very cheap instruments of immense national importance.

"I have heretofore proposed to the consideration of Congress the expediency of establishing a National University, and also a Military Academy."

Congress soon established the Academy to promote the science and art of war, but paid no attention to the words of the great General in favor of institutions to benefit the sciences and arts of peace.

In 1797 the trustees of the Massachusetts society began the publication of pamphlets, or, as we should now say, bulletins, on agricultural topics, which afterwards were developed into a regularly issued journal. At least two other societies were formed during the last century, the New York Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Arts, March 12, 1798, and a voluntary Agricultural Association at Sturbridge, Massachusetts, in 1799.

Near the opening of the new century (in 1801) a suggestion was made to the Massachusetts Society that fairs should be regularly held in May and October on Cambridge Common and bounties given for certain articles. This plan included not only the exhibition of agricultural products, but also stated open markets for their sale. No action was taken by the society regarding this suggestion. In the