Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/97

Rh and professor of agriculture in the Iowa agricultural college at Ames. The work at Ames rounded out by administration and study an experience admirably calculated to fit him for the work of extending and developing, with the cooperation of congress and the advice and approval of the president, the work of the department of agriculture.

During its eight years under the control of Secretary Wilson, the department of agriculture has made most important advances which bear directly on the prosperity of the country commercially as well as agriculturally. This department requires a breadth of comprehension as wide as the varied climate, and soils and conditions of the continent and the islands over which its administration extends. It is constantly engaged in scientific investigation along old lines and new in all parts of the world; and it is called upon to cope with formidable evils, to advance new systems of propagation, and to use hitherto unused possibilities for increasing harvests. Secretary Wilson has so directed the large body of competent workers in his charge as to meet these demands very completely. Never before has the department of agriculture been so progressive, so beneficial to the whole country, and so evidently productive of money returns to the people by increasing products and preventing waste as at the present time.

In the last four years all bureaus and allied branches have been unified and brought into harmonious working order, and investigations to secure new crops and animals and to discover better methods have been widened and deepened. Small services with comparatively limited fields have expanded into important bureaus whose operations cover the whole country very effectively. Secretary Wilson has labored constantly to bring the department into close touch with the people, especially with practical farmers, and he has succeeded. The advances made under his administration have been epoch-making.

Very notable changes have been made within the department. The naturally allied services of plant disease and plant breeding investigations, botanical investigations, grass and forage plant investigations, pomological investigations, horticultural investigations, and seed testing and distribution, have been brought into a well proportioned unity as the Bureau of Plant Industry, with a very capable administrator in control of all its widespread branches.