High Plains Horticulture: A History

5: Science and Its Application to Horticulture

63 p T he year 1887 marked a watershed in the history of horticulture on the High Plains. By then, the idea that horticulture contributes to better living had supporters both on the homestead and in the community. Legislation promoting horticulture, including the establishment of state horticultural societies, had passed in Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. New laws and regulations concerning water and land, thus horticulture, had been decreed in these states as well as in Dakota and Wyoming territories. And while federal land policy had yet to be reconciled with the nature of the arid West, an overall development plan had been suggested and its obstacles defined. Before 1887, horticulture, generally speaking, had advanced by trial and error, in an unsystematic and fragmented manner. After 1887, horticulture would advance by the application of science, backed by federal financial and administrative support. Furthermore, for the quarter century ending in 1914, horticulture on the High Plains would be guided largely by the work of three 5 Science and Its Application to Horticulture 64 Science and Its Application to Horticulture professors: Charles Bessey of Nebraska, Aven Nelson of Wyoming, and Niels Hansen of South Dakota. While Major Powell had been interested primarily in the development of irrigated farming on a large scale, these three professors devoted their research, teaching, and service to what grew and what could grow on the land Powell had classified as pasturage, which included most of the High Plains. Of the three, Bessey was the earliest proponent of applying the principles of science to the practice of agriculture and horticulture. In fact, it was he who had coined “Science with Practice” as the motto for the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now Iowa State University, before he moved on to the University of Nebraska. For scientific principles to be applied to agricultural practices, Bessey argued for more and better research at the land-grant colleges. Toward that end, he was among the earliest advocates of federal funding for agricultural research. It is unknown whether, while still teaching at Iowa, he attended a conference on the topic in Washington, D.C., called by the United States commissioner of agriculture, George B. Loring. We do know that immediately following the meeting, Bessey was called by his colleague Seaman Knapp, professor of agriculture and soon to be president of Iowa State, to help draft a bill providing for federal aid to a national network of agricultural experiment stations. Introduced in May 1882 by Representative Cyrus C. Carpenter of Iowa, the bill did not pass out of committee; however, after another five years of negotiations, Senator William H. Hatch of Missouri succeeded in getting the legislation passed and signed into law by President Grover Cleveland.1 The act of March 2, 1887, known as the Hatch Act, inaugurated perhaps the most successful partnership in U.S. history between the federal government and the states: it created a nationwide system of agricultural experiment stations, with each station operated separately by its respective land-grant institution. The act’s overall purpose was “to aid in acquiring and diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects connected with agriculture, and to promote scientific investigation and experiment respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science .” Such language was not new; it reflected a traditional outlook going back to America’s founders and resembled, for example, the enabling language of the American Philosophical Society, founded in Philadelphia in 1743 for the purpose of “promoting useful knowledge.” Furthermore, the language of the Hatch Act distinguished not so much between “pure” and “applied” science as between science and its applications, the latter distinction a favorite topic of Charles Bessey’s. Science and Its Application to Horticulture 65 Indeed, given Knapp’s generally nonscholarly interests, one can reasonably assume that Bessey drafted Section 2 of the act, which set forth the scientific research and experimentation to be conducted by the stations and read in part: “that it shall be the object and duty of said experiment stations to conduct original researches or verify experiments on the physiology of plants and animals; the diseases to which they are severally subject, with the remedies for the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth . . . the capacity of new plants or trees for acclimation . . . [and] the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants.”2 By the time...