Evening star., 1936-04-05
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

lie aS IL pdSSSS AAoii Sch
Grafton to generation Is In
L many respects the greatest
and youngest of all the sciences.
"I trust the day will come when
humanity will take as great an inter-
est in the creation Of superior forms
Of life as it has taken in past years
in the perfection of superior forms
of machinery. In the long run su-
perior life forms may have a greater
profit than machinery"
Thus writes Secretary Of Agriculture
Henry A. Wallace in presenting to the
public for the first time an unheralded
project-the nearest to his own heart
Of all the new enterprises Of the de-
partment-upon which group Of
specialists has been engaged for the
past three years. It Is genetic survey
Of the world to find the superior life
strains Of plants and animals useful
to man. The first comprehensive re-
port on this survey will be issued in
q few weeks and distributed to half
million farmers in an effort to make
American agriculture "genetically-
minded"
In this field, Secretary Wallace be-
lieves, may be expected the next great
advance in mans conquest over ma
ture. 1t holds forth prospects Of an
hitherto undreamed Of abundance
perhaps as great an increase In ma
terial goods as has come from the
development Of the physical sciences
in the past half century, when the
world has made greater progress than
in thousand preceding years. The
object Of the genetic survey project
is to plough the field for this advance.
Take, for example, the field OF corn
alone, perhaps Americas most impor-
tant single crop. This Is Secretary
Wallace's own speciality. He had made
personally some Of the most note
worthy contributions to the science of
corn breeding. AS result of genetic
work In this field, the Secretary point
ed out in an interview, hybrids have
been developed which eventually will
replace the strains Of corn now grown
and will result, at conservative esti-
mate, In the same amount of corn as
is now produced being grown on TO-
100000 less acres. The implications
are revolutionary. He expects q half
century to elapse before this comes
to pass-for the mind of man moves
slowly in accepting the new.
The survey has uncovered some
startling facts. Perhaps the most
notable Is in respect to dairy cattle,
It was a unique and tremendous un-
dertaking to survey some 26, ,000, 900
animals in order to determine what
progress had been made in breeding
for consistently good production and
to discover, If possible, where the best
strains for producing ability existed
AT the outset 1t was necessary to re-
strict the study to herds in which
records OF production for q consider
able percentage Of the animals had
been maintained continuously over q
period Of eight or more years. The
surveys actually made covered more
than 1000 commercial, college and
experiment station herds.
Thus, at the outset, the surveyors
were dealing with much better milk
and cream producers than the aver.
age. As q result, says a preliminary
report on the work, "it has been esti.
mated that in our dairy herd i'm
proVement associations only about
one-third Of the cows produce enough
to be profitable to their owners, an
other third just about breed even and
the last third are such low producers
as TO lose money each year for their
owners" And these are the upper 2
per cent Of the dairy cattle of the
country. What must be the condition
on the small farms, with men trying
to make living on small herds of
from Is to 20 animals belonging to the
great proletariat Of cowdom?
Not that the dairy farmers have not
been interested in breeding for better
mixers. They simply have not had
the basic data to work with. That Is
what Secretary Wallace is trying to
supply them. They have consistently
culled out of their herds the poor
mixers. They have kept the bulls
whose mothers were the best mixers.
But this has been q crude sort of
genetics. Says the preliminary report:
The poor cows will always be there to
Gull unless q program Of breeding is
followed which will eliminate the
strains responsible for the low produc-
tion. The job is to locate the superior
strains, either in America or Europe,
and as readily as possible to eliminate
all other dairy cattle"
When the superior strains Of plants