e. It
is to the abundance of agricultural production, as compared with our
home consumption, and the largely increased and highly profitable
market abroad which we have enjoyed in recent years, that we are
mainly indebted for our present prosperity as a people. We must look
for its continued maintenance to the same substantial resource.
There is no branch of industry in which labor, directed by scientific
knowledge, yields such increased production in comparison with
unskilled labor, and no branch of the public service to which the
encouragement of liberal appropriations can be more appropriately
extended. The omission to render such aid is not a wise economy,
but, on the contrary, undoubtedly results in losses of immense sums
annually that might be saved through well-directed efforts by the
Government to promote this vital interest.

The results already accomplished with the very limited means
heretofore placed at the command of the Department of Agriculture is
an earnest of what may be expected with increased appropriations for
the several purposes indicated in the report of the Commissioner, with
a view to placing the Department upon a footing which will enable it
to prosecute more effectively the objects for which it is established.

Appropriations are needed for a more complete laboratory, for the
establishment of a veterinary division and a division of forestry, and
for an increase of force.

The requirements for these and other purposes, indicated in the report
of the Commissioner under the head of the immediate necessities of the
Department, will not involve any expenditure of money that the country
can not with propriety now undertake in the interests of agriculture.

It is gratifying to learn from the Bureau of Education the extent to
which educational privileges throughout the United States have been
advanced during the year. No more fundamental responsibility rests
upon Congress than that of devising appropriate measures of financial
aid to education, supplemental to local action in the States and
Territories and in the District of Columbia. The wise forethought of
the founders of our Government has not only furnished the basis for
the support of the common-school systems of the newer States, but laid
the foundations for the maintenance of their universities and colleges
of agriculture and the mechanic arts. Measures in accordance with this
traditional policy, for the further benefit of all these interes