Some facts concerning the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. Presented to a hearing of legislative committees. Albany, April 5, 1910/Introduction
I. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture in the United States is advancing rapidly, and nowhere is there manifest more activity or more wide-spread interest than in New York. This general activity is doubtless due largely to increased cost of living and better returns from farm products. Farm lands in the state are increasing in value and there is every evidence that we are entering a period of great agricultural development and prosperity. While New York is perhaps not so wholly dependent on its agricultural interests as some of the western and southern states, still it ranks fourth among the states in the value of its agricultural products, having a total value in 1899, the last census year, of $245,-270,600. Agriculture will always be the principal industry in the greater part of the state and the foundation of its prosperity.
With the renewed interest in agriculture, increasing demands are being made on the educational institutions of the state to provide training in agricultural subjects. Farmers want their sons and daughters to take up farming as their life work fitly prepared for it. Farmers themselves are demanding training in advanced scientific methods. City men and boys in ever increasing numbers desire to go on farms and are looking for places to secure the necessary training. The state has adopted the policy of providing institutions where such education can be obtained, having established a college of agriculture and three special schools of agriculture, besides having begun the introduction of agricultural studies into the common schools and high schools. The state is now facing the question as to whether it will develop its existing institutions to meet their immediate demands, or whether the progress shall be arrested. The leadership in this forward movement should rest with the State College of Agriculture. It must dispense information and rouse the people by putting before them better methods and higher purposes. It must find new truth and carry the discoveries of investigators to the people on the farms. It must train teachers for the teaching of agriculture in the secondary and high schools. Its work must be constructive and it must point the way.
The New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University, through its investigations and bulletins, its lectures and demonstrations with farmers, and its large number of students receiving instruction, is rendering its best service to the people of the State. If it has not met all expectations, it is largely because its facilities have been almost trivial as compared with the work it has been expected to do. The demands that come to the College from the folks on the farms and in the rural schools are far and away beyond the facilities for meeting them. The capacity of the College for effective resident teaching is taxed much beyond its limits this year in caring for the 968 students; and the student body is increasing at the rate of 150 students per year. The mere increase in number of students makes demands on teachers and equipment that few persons understand. It is not merely a question of finding a place where students may sit, but desks, microscopes, special apparatus, animals, library facilities, and the like.
The work of the College is for the people. It is the people of the State that make the demands and the College looks to the people for its support. To carry forward the work which is being crowded upon the College in greater volume and with greater persistency each year, greatly enlarged facilities must be provided.
Bills are now before the Legislature of the State providing for the further buildings needed immediately, and for the increased maintenance which must come if the College is to meet the demands of the- state work. It is the purpose of this circular to state certain facts regarding the College which the people of the state should know.
Regarding the work of the College, Dean Bailey stated during the 3909 Farmers' Week: "We are conducting reading-courses with less than 16,000 farmers and farmers' wives in New York, yet there are a half million such in the State. We are reaching at this moment less than 7,000 teachers, but there are 40,000 school teachers in the State and hundreds are being prepared each year. We are reaching 65,000 children this year, out of one and one-half million in the elementary and high schools of the State. We are conducting demonstrations or test work on some 300 farms out of the 227,000 in the State. We are teaching one student for about every 500 farms. In this College of Agriculture, large as it has grown to be, we yet have less than one student to each rural township in the State. There are probably more farm boys and girls in any one agricultural county in the State than are now in this College of Agriculture. All this is in spite of the fact that the number of students is increasing so rapidly that we cannot properly keep up with the work. The value of farm property in New York in the last census year was $1,069,723,895. The money appropriated for maintenance of college education in agriculture is about one sixty-sixth of one per cent, of the valuation.