Evening Star Newspaper, June 6, 1926, Page 77

ILLUSTRATD FEATURES Part 5—8 Pages World’s Great- est Practical and Scientific Agri- cultural brgani- zation.as Depart- ment of United States Govern- ment, Destroys Handicaps to Production. H to measure American progress. The department, born in the brain of George Washington. has developed in half a century from a ‘‘winsome, wee thing” to an organization numbering more than 21900 people whose activi- ties personally affect the welfare pf overy man, woman and child in the Nation. President Wilson declared in 1917 that the department is “the greatest practical and sclentific agricultural organization in the world"” Yet few people realize the scope of its activi- ties or its many splendid achieve- ments that contribute to the welfare of the country. Nearly cvery house- wife knows, for example. that the de- partment teaches methu but she probably nev it inspects the meat thal comes on her table and guarantees the purity of every legitimate dose of medicine that she gives her children. Nearly every man knows that the department sends out some free seeds to people sometimes, but he probably does not know that it has introduced from the far corners of the earth 10,- 000 new plants, many of which fur- nish products that are now in daily use on the tables of the Natlon, or that its experiments with a cattle tick led to the revelation of the mosquito s the cause of vellow laria, and made po: of the Panama Cana In the department’ many recognized worl each on the part has made may illustra Washington ar spondent T BY C. MORAN. ISTORIANS alres ferring to the of the Depa culture in 18 ever and ma- the digging rsonnel are authorities, A newspaper corre- 5 v close to ;pedia of all culture and allied Indust newspaper man said to b “You must hav of time, during into books in eat deal . digging the ary of Con- re.” was the re- ver opened a book in the Library of Cong I happened to find out. rich - beginning. that if 1 got 8 any subject there was som> mai the Depart- ment of Agricuit wito knew more been printed aan out and system has on it. T huited tha talked to him— and never failed me ye The achicv ties through romance of A include the con cattle, which was responsibie formerly for the death of thousands of people annually who contracted the disease from milk or other auimal products; the establishment in this country of Durum wheat which is now a $50,000,000 industry: the successful war against plant and animal in- sect pests and diseas that, un- checked, would ultimately render agri- culture impossible on the American continent. cse authori- | e HE animal industry service of the department had its beginning as @ veterinary experiment station in 1878 to combat plemro-pneumonia, which was prevalent among live stock at that time. The disease was wiped out. Foot-and-mouth discase has re- peatedly invaded the United States, but each time has been held in check. Hog cholera used to ravage the farms in terrific outbreaks. Many a man, with a snug fortune in pork on the hoof when he went to bed, has arisen | in the morning to find the whole herd sick of cholera and has seen his money go to feed the buzzards. Department veterinarians, through long experimentation. developed a system of administering serum and virus that made it possible to con- trol the disease. Glanders and farcy and dourine, deadly diseases of horses for which there was no cure, used to be com- mon. They are now reduced to an occasional case. lLess than two dec- ades ago sheep scabies was prevalent throughout two-thirds of the United Btates. It ex today only in small and scattered a Neerly the same is true of cattle scabies Through the accredited herd plan, fthrough prohibiting the shipment of diseased animals in interstate commerce, and by various other means, tuberculosis in cattle is being brought under con- trol and the department is pushing toward final eradication of the disease. There used to be a great mystery about splenetic fever, or Texas fever, in cattle. If cattle from the Southern ranges were driven North, while they might not have the fever themselves, they seemed to communicate it to Northern cattle. But' the transmis- sion was not by any known means. Finally, the veterinarians of the de- partment announced that the disease was_ transmitted by a tick that the cattle brought with them from the Bquthern ranges. The idea was scoffed at. Medical men referred to it as “the romance of pathology.” But the department’s experts took the ticks and scattered them over ures whore no Southern cattle ad ever been. Noithern cattle turned on those pastures developed the fever. The contention was proved and finally scientifically demonstrated. The discovery opened up the whole fleld of ingect causation of disease. only the veterinary world, but the medical world, accepted it. It led to the discovery of the mosquito 88 the bearer of malaria and yellow fever. It has made possible the con: trol of one of the most deadly plagues that the human race ever knew, and has removed from men’s minds the terrible fear that used to be 8o com- mon when nobodv knew when or where a scourge of yellow fever might appear. . * ok ok % DERAL meat inspection is an- other big_ activity. Every plece of meat and every can of meat product that -goes “inte interpiaie important points from which | Preparation of Cotto " MAGAZINE SECTION The Sundiy Staf WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 6, 1926. Six Decades of Farm Science Transform Living Conditions ed for insechs e w Stand Z STt commerce has the department’s stamp that it is from a healthy animal, that it was prepared in a sanitary slaughter house, and that it is whole- some human food. Every packing plant that does an interstate business must be licensed. Inspectors are placed in it to see that. it 1s kept In a sanitary condition. Every animal that is brought to it for slaughter is inspected. If the animal is diseased, it is condemned and cannot be used for human food. All animals are killed under the eye of the inspectors and every carcass is given a post-mortem examination to detect any evidence of disease. * ok ok X LLONG before the agricultural di- vision' of the Patent Office was established, in 1836, consuls and naval officers were sending home seeds and cuttings for new and rare crops. Down the years since then hardy alfalfas have been introduced | from Siberia and other parts of Asia; soy beans from the Orient; Sudan grass, Rhodes grass, Napler grass, the velvet bean, the purple vetch. invaluable to 1 of the West, have been intrbduced. Among fruits, there are the date, the avocado, the mango, the Chinese and Japenese persimmons, the papaya and the pistache nut. Nearly. every coun- try of the globe has been drawn upon for plants that are necessary to meet some need of the American people. The introduced plants were not always just what, was needed.. Ameri- can-Egyptian cotton, for example, represents much more than merely transplanting a variety of cotton from Egypt to the United States. The American-Eigyptian cotton industry in the Southwest is based upon the most careful breeding that has ever. been Pima cotton, the superior type of America-Egyptian cotton for uniform- | ity of quality, is a creation of depart. ment plant breeders. The axtensive campaigns against plant diseases also '} have heen important contributions to national prosperity: The soil work of the department includes the mapping of soil types throughout the aountry and experi- ments which deal with maintaining the fertility of the soil. Before the great war broke out the United States depended on Germany for practically all the potash it used. Since then sources of potash have been discovered in this country, which ultimately may be made suffi- cient to meet American needs. Pot- ash is now coming from a number of lakes in Nebraska and California. The department’s soil experts also have been .manufacturing . potash grows in the waters of the Pacific. Methods of recovering large .quanti- ties of potash from the dust that comes. out. of the stacks at cement factories and blast furnaces have been developed. l 1 Next to the Insects, -the . farm. | ers’- most destructive enemies - are the wild animals, little and big, that take toll of his substance. ‘Many of the: four-footed wild -animals are de- structive, but most of the two-footed feathered ones aré beneficial. A corps: of 400 to 500 skilled hunters is maintained by the department to combat the Injurious wild ahimals in remote corners of the West, where mountain lions, bobcats. bears, wolves and coyotes have been able to maintain their numbers practi- cally undiminished despite the. best efforts of the settlers and ranchers. A mountain lion, killed in rom- from kelp, the glant seaweed that|. and: d.ise,uas' ards. School stroyed $1,000.° worth -of- live; stock in. a single month. Another moun- tain Hon had killed seven colts dur- ing the Spring. In the same:State citizens killed a pair of wolves which had destroyed more . than §2,500 | worth of stock in the preceding year. A ranch owner in Texas says that in less than three months he.lost nearly 800 sheep, worth $3,200, through: dep- redations of six coyotes, which later were killed by Government hunters. FICTION AND /. Indpeclion service for diameter in- Colorado where . sheep |’ 'owners: used to report a loss of gbout 25 sheep a.day throughout the sea- son. * The destruction of predatory animals has been so thorough there that sheep now range freely and un- attended without loss. The small animals, such as-prairie dogs, pocket gophers, ground ‘squir- rels, rabhits, rats and mice, moun- tain beavers and woodchucks, destroy a great deal more property than the | worth_ $500,000. than 100,000,000 aicres “of -puhlic’ and’ private’ lands, and’ where they : o cur in large numbers on the open range they are exceedingly destruc- tive to cultivated crops and forage. The department hunters have greatly reduced the numbers of these and other rodents over a wide area, with the result that argiculture has been made profitable in. many regions where it was formerly a fa ymns' W tion Pici outitof New Gork. Prairie_dogs alorie ‘occupy more, For a number of years rables has been prevalent among the predatory animals in California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Utah. It is estimated that a single outbreak in Neyada in. 1915-16 killed live stock Some ranches lost from 200 to 400 head of cattle. Nearly 2,000 persons are known to have been bitten by rabid wild animals and at least 47 of those attacked are known to have died. The disease still main- tains a foothold in all the States named, but efforts to suppress its car- riers have been so successful that its spread to other States has been pre- vented. When an outbreak of the disease occurs in any district hunters are immediately concentrated there, 8o that the wild animals carrying the rables are speedily destroyed.. * ok ok % 'HEN the department was ‘organ- ized, in 1862, the Commissioner of Agriculture proposed to enploy a chemist. An inquisitive Congressman wanted to know what' there was for such an officlal to do in the depart- ment. The commissioner replied that in the experiments with‘new varie- ties of grapes there were analyses which could be made with profit. He wanted also to make some chemical analyses of the sorghum sirups, then but newly introduced by the plant scouts, ., . The sugar and sirup experts of the department recently accumulated 8 considerable -quantity of a sugar so rare that, though it had been known to chemists for a Jong time, it had never been found in sufficient quantities to permit even of experi- ments. It is suspected of being one of the elements of the manna on which the children of Israel fed dur- ing . their 40 years of wandering in One of the Great Achieve- ments of Ameri- can History. How Scientists Made Possible the Digging of the Panama Canal. Practical Re- sults. found in minute guantities on cer- tain trees of that region. It has been found also in minute quantities on melez or larch trees in France, and from that it took its name of me. lezitose. A report was rec#ived by the depart- ment recently that the bees in cer- tain sections of Pennsylvania were dying because their honey crystallized and they could nét eat it. It was found that the honeycombs wers full of melezitose. Then the discovery was made that the bees had been feed- ing on honey dew on the pine trees, and that led to the discovery that this particular honey dew was se- creted by some very small insects. Now the world has enough melezitose to enable the chemists to find ous what it really s and the uses to which it may be applied. The sugar and sirup experts have been at work also on the production of a uniform care sirup that will neither ferment nor crystallize. There used to be, every now and then, a mysterious explosion in a grain elevator or a mill. A great deal of property was destroyed and many lives were lost. Department chemists discovered that they were | explosions of grain dust, and a cru sade of prevention, largely by super vislon and education, was begun | Methods have been developed since | then of minimizing the possibility of explosions. ok o % HEN the Department of Agricul ture was established. in 1862, the | Smithsonian Institution was making | some efforts at gathering meteorolog !ical data. The department began pub | lishimg these data in its monthly re | ports. "The first Commissioner of | Agriculture, Isaac Newton, twice rec ‘ommended to Congress that “If. un- | der the direction of the Government, | the state of the weather at different | points of the country could be daily | communicated by telegraph, so as to be immediately spread over the whole country. very important and bene- | ficial results might follow." The department continued fo pub lish the Smithsonian data until 1870. | when pressure from many sources to induce the Government to establi a practical service for the prediction of storms and floods resulted in the organization of a meteorological di vision in the office of the chief signal officer of the Army. The weather service was conducted by that office until 1890, when the Weather Bureau as such, was officlally_organized and transferred to the Department of Agriculture. | " The Weather Burenu maintains a staff of observers stationed at sultable locations all over the United States on the islands of the oceans. in Alaska. Co-operation is maintained with other observers in Canada_and on the ships that ply the seas. Each observer reports the weather condi tions by telegraph every day. From these reports of heat and cold. of cloudiness and rain and snow and , and of wind. the forecasters are enabled to know which way a change in weather is moving. how rapidly it is moving and when it will arrive at any particular place. Many of the observers are farmers and business men, but some of them. in order to perform their dutles, have to face hardships that most people never dream of. Some of them are stationed in wild and_lonely -places where human society is hardly ever to be found. Others are on little necks of sand running out into the ocean, or on little islands far off the mainland, and they must stay at their posts through all kinds of weather. More recently the Weather Bureau has been working out a system of flving-weather- forecasts, In anticipa tion of the time when “we'll all be flying.” * ¥ % % THE Bureau of Agricultural Eco nomics, one of the young bureaus in the department, has made impor- tant contributions in its brief span %o promoting the economic phases of agriculture, such as the marketing of crops and live stock and the organi- zation of production to meet con- sumption requirements. A market- news. service by telegraph and radio has been developed by the bureau. whereby farmers everywhere are kept informed of market conditions, avail- able supplies of food products both in the United States and abroad, and prices. The, crop-reporting service is said to he the most efficient of its kind in the world. On the morning of crop reporting dgy the crop reporting board goes ifito a special room. The reports are placed on a table by the Secretary of Agriculture or his representative. Then the door of the room is locked, all telephones are disconnected and the room is so arranged that there is no possibility of any one inside the room making signals to any one on the outside. _ The necessity for guarding the re- ports so strictly is that advance in- formation of what the estimatg will be would enable speculators to take advantage of the knowledge and manipulate the markets to the detri- ment of.the public. While the board is in session newspaper reporters are gathering in_a room arranged for them on another floor. Each report- er has a telephone already connected with the office of his newspaper or press association. ‘When the estimate is finished it is signed by the Secretary of Agri- culture or his repvesentative. Then mimeographed coples oF & are teaught to the newspaper room and face down alongside the telephone and telegraph instruments. The newspaper men :stand behind a line on the floor and at the word “Gol” race to their instruments, turn over the report and flash the news to the world. There was an occasion, several years ago, when the sinformation “leaked” out in advance. An investi- gation disclosed that the information was conveyed {0 A man in the street by means of signals made by raising and lowering a window shade in the i s .. Abe, wiiderneps. | It, bas always bu; beard ropm.