The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1933-12-28
By STIRLING GRAHAM
In the Baltimore Sunday Sun

ness, industry and the farm. Now
science has been given helping hand
by the New Deal-$1, 100000 having
been appropriated from the Fedora!
allotment of the Public Works fund
for enlarging and improving the Uni
ted States Department of Agricul-
lures experiment station at Beltsville,
Maryland, some twenty miles from the
steps of the nations Capitol.
In 1910 the Department of Agricul-
sure purchased a 5O0-acre tract at
Beltsville, dividing it into two expert
mental farms, one for the dairy divis-
ion, the other for the division of the
Bureau of Animal Industry. Barns
and laboratories were erected. Land
was fenced in as pasture on which
cattle could rove at will. There were
gently rolling lawns for sheep to
Craze on and pens and sheds for goats
and swine. From time to time new
buildings were erected and additional
land added until the Beltsville farm
covered close to 5000 acres.
But the laboratories, in which scien-
fists studied the effects of nutrition
and breeding on guinea pigs and rab-
bits, before applying their discoveries
10 the heavier and more valuable live
stock outside, were considered too
small and inadequately equipped for
studying problems that not only were
of decided importance to the farmer
but concerned the dealer and consumer
as we'll. Moreover, the farm was di-
vided by an extensive tract of private
~ owned land.
With the recent allotment from the
Public Works fund, this privately
owned land has now been leased,
bringing the farms total area up to
about 1000 acres. Moreover, besides
the new barns, pens, small laboratory
and other buildings that will be posi-
BILE with the sum obtained, an animal
husbandry laboratory costing $425,OO0
will be constructed, sufficiently COM
modious to house under one roof the
various activities on nutrition, genet
les, histology, physiology, bacteriol-
ogy, meats and wool that now occupy
separate quarters on the farm, More
aver, other research bureaus of the
Department of Agriculture that are
now located in Washington and near
by areas will bring together many of
their projects like the reunited forces
of scattered army and, established
in new quarters on the farm, make the
Beltsville station the largest one of its
kind in the world. Many phases of
work of the Bureau of Entomology
will be established there, as will also
the Bureau of Plant Industry, and the
studies of animal diseases and para
sites that for many years has been To-
Gated at Bethesda, suburb of Wash
ington, which, because of its real es-
tate development, no longer desires
such farm.
Indeed, the fact that the Beltsville
station has always been operated in
cooperation with similar stations,
such as Maryland's Agricultural farm
at College Park, and other expert
mental farms throughout the country,
L. oa,nkOe,14I &c thing
aiding it's continued development.
Moreover, the Governments interest
has increased since the recent estab-
lishment at Beltsville of the radio eX
pertinent station of the Bureau of
Standards and the airplane landing
field of the Department of Commerce.
This winter the Civilian Conserva-
ton Corps camp forces that were en-
camped near Mountain Lake Park last
summer will also make portion of
the farm their home for six months,
utilizing as barracks a vacated build
ing which was once reformatory
school for girls.
The first units to arrive are al
ready engaged in clearing and i'm
proving thickly wooded areas of the
farm. Their brown uniforms give a
military air to their activities, and the
Forestry Departments trucks that
rumble continuously into the farm
with road building material, add to the
Illusion of military activity.
Even the men at the head of the
Beltsville project, who are kept busy
these days committing between their
Offices in Washington and the farm,
have about them that feverish war
time attitude that has become a char
acteristic of many a Government Of
fetal since the New Deal got under
way.
Indeed, it is no easy matter to pin
them down for an hours questioning,
but DR.. E. W. Sheets, chief of the ami
NAL husbandry division, was finally
eornered. Since an early hour he had
been going over the plans for new
cattle barn, comforting with the farms
Superintendent and studying possible
;nonroven1enaS for the newly acquired