Ross, Earle D

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Volume 28 | Number 1 Article 3
1-1-1947
Charles Mason and Federal Aid to Agriculture
Earle D. Ross
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Ross, Earle D. "Charles Mason and Federal Aid to Agriculture." The Palimpsest 28 (1947), 12-24.
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Charles Mason and Federal 
Aid to Agriculture
In his eminently practical and patriotic ad­
dress’' opening the State Fair at Burlington in 
1864, Judge George G. Wright, the president, 
expressed gratification at Iowa’s achievements in 
supporting the troops at the front and in the total 
outstanding contribution which his State had 
made to the common effort.
As an official pronouncement of Iowa’s agricul­
tural priority, Judge Wright read a letter from 
the new Federal Commissioner of Agriculture, the 
Quaker dairyman of Philadelphia, Isaac Newton: 
“The reports of the average yield of the crops 
throughout the country, for the present year, 
clearly show that your State has the honor of be­
ing placed at the head of the list. . . .  It not only 
speaks volumes of praise in behalf of the enter­
prise and industry of your rapidly growing and 
thriving population, but it seems very clearly to 
indicate that you are peculiarly blessed with an 
adaptation of climate and soil, unsurpassed, if 
equaled, by any other State in the Union. . . . 
With this astonishing growth of population and 
wealth, a boundless career of influence and im-
12
CHARLES MASON AND AGRICULTURE 13
portance awaits the futurity of your noble state.”
This rather verbose tribute was a marked 
understatement, both as regards the productive 
achievements of Iowa and its influence upon na­
tional policies respecting that interest. The State’s 
participation in all of the achievements which 
stemmed from the basic acts of the sixties is gen­
erally known. What is not so well known and 
appreciated is the long ante bellum campaign of 
agitation and preliminary organization that even­
tuated in the “Civil War Agricultural New Deal”.
In these preliminary labors the youthful State 
participated in definite ways that forecasted fu­
ture leadership. Iowa was a center of the move­
ment in the West which had the interrelated ob­
jective of establishing agricultural colleges and 
creating State and Federal bureaus to promote 
agriculture. Suel Foster, reformer and horticul­
turist, and William Duane Wilson, reformer and 
agricultural journalist, were among the many Io- 
wans who championed the cause of the farmers 
and urged that the government assist in the pro­
motion of agriculture. Among those who did val­
iant service in helping to organize the Federal 
agencies dealing with agriculture was Charles 
Mason, most versatile of Iowa pioneers.
In March, 1853, Charles Mason was appointed 
Commissioner of the Patent Office. It was, in
14 THE PALIMPSEST
some respects, an unusual choice, for Mason had 
had only incidental experience with such work, 
but a casual glance at his activities reveals his 
varied interests. A native of central New York, 
he had graduated from the United States Military 
Academy at West Point at the head of his class — 
a class which included Robert E. Lee and Joseph 
E. Johnston. He had later studied law and served 
as editorial writer on the staff of the New York 
Evening Post. In 1836 he came to Belmont, Wis­
consin Territory, and in 1838 had been appointed 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the newly 
created Territory of Iowa, serving with distinction 
until June, 1847. Later he served as one of the 
commissioners who drafted the Code of 1851 and 
was a candidate for United States Senator and 
for Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Judge Mason brought to his new office a wide 
variety of experiences and interests. In addition 
to his military and legal education he had consid­
erable mechanical genius and he was interested in 
farming and machinery having to do with farm­
ing, including steam tractors and harvesters. He 
was also a practical farmer on a large scale and a 
heavy investor in Iowa and Wisconsin lands.
At the time of Mason’s appointment, the Patent 
Office was included in the Department of the In­
terior, having been established in 1836 to take
CHARLES MASON AND AGRICULTURE 15
over the patent registration duties in the office of 
the Secretary of State. It was transferred to the 
Interior Department in 1849. In addition to its 
proper business of issuing and supervising pat­
ents, including patents on agricultural implements 
and machinery, there was an irregularly adminis­
tered, indifferently housed, and inadequately fi­
nanced division devoted to the collection of agri­
cultural statistics and studies of various agricul­
tural productions and problems. How came the 
Patent Office to have such a division?
The story goes back to Henry Leavitt Ells­
worth, appointed the first Commissioner of the 
Patent Office. Like Charles Mason, Ellsworth 
was a man of varied interests. When he took over 
the Patent Office in 1836, it was a ward of the 
State Department and the new Commissioner be­
came interested in the collection of seeds and 
plants via the consular service. He then distrib­
uted them for trial in the United States. This 
dabbling in agricultural affairs was looked upon 
with suspicion in some quarters, but in 1839 Con­
gress appropriated $1,000 “out of the patent fund, 
to be expended by the Commissioner of Patents 
in the collection of agricultural statistics, and for 
other agricultural purposes”.
The work grew. The appropriation act of 1847 
granted $3,000 of the patent fund for agricultural
16 THE PALIMPSEST
purposes, with the proviso that the Commission­
er's report on agricultural subjects must not ex­
ceed four hundred pages. The appropriation from 
the Patent Office fund for agricultural purposes 
in 1853 was $5,000.
Mason brought system and efficiency into the 
Patent Office, improving personnel by dismissing 
incompetents and political schemers and employ­
ing women clerks on an equal status. His own 
strict regimen as set down in his diary for Decem­
ber 29, 1856, suggests that of John Quincy 
Adams: “Rise at 6 — read or write until break­
fast. Go to office a little before 9. Remain stead­
ily at work until 3:30 — then home to dinner. Af­
ter dinner read hour to daughter — then walk for 
an hour — go to office for an hour or two — return 
home at 8 — call on friends or receive visits for an 
hour — read for 2 hours and go to bed at 11 P. M. 
In this way I am accomplishing a good deal in 
the course of a day.“ One would think that he 
was, indeed! Possibly Mason's life-long habits 
of order and application were a hold-over from the 
long, regimented days at West Point.
While Judge Mason's general administration of 
the Patent Office was highly efficient, his promo­
tion of agricultural activities was to have the most 
permanent significance. Expert scientists were 
brought to the service either as regular staff mem­
CHARLES MASON AND AGRICULTURE 17
bers or as collaborators. The immediate direction 
of the agricultural work, including the editing of 
the agricultural report, was placed in charge of 
Daniel Jay Browne, who after study at Harvard 
had been a farmer, farm editor and writer, and 
an extensive traveler.
The beginning of a corps of permanent investi­
gators was made in 1854 with the employment of 
an entomologist, Townend Glover. He remained 
with the Patent Office until 1859 and served con­
tinuously with the Department of Agriculture 
from 1863 to 1878. His appointment may be re­
garded as the beginning of a career service in 
agriculture. Chemists and botanists were em­
ployed on a temporary basis and an arrangement 
was made with the Smithsonian Institution for 
regular weather observations and reports. Thus 
were established the rudimentary bases of the 
line agencies’' of what became the Department 
of Agriculture.
The annual reports on agriculture were sys­
tematized and made more definitely informing. 
Senator James W. Grimes complained to Mason, 
his fellow townsman, in June, 1853, that the “let­
ters from Tom, Dick, and Harry amount to but 
little. Occasionally there is one of some value, 
but the greater part of them are not worth as much 
as the paper upon which they were written.’’ The
18 THE PALIMPSEST
drawings of feral animals and similar embellish­
ments were, Grimes felt, of no practical value and 
he suggested such subjects as the breeds of cattle. 
Elaborate essays on the latter subject as well as 
on methods of planting and cultivating crops and 
on farm machinery were prepared by Browne and 
some of the leading scientists. To make room for 
these papers the former regional correspondence 
was condensed and the long tables of agricultural 
“statistics", admittedly unreliable and therefore of 
little value, were abandoned.
Mason’s interest in scientific agriculture soon 
showed results. By this time, too, the influence of 
farm journals and agricultural societies was mak­
ing an impression on the members of Congress. 
Federal purse strings were being loosened. Pre­
vious to 1854 the agricultural appropriations had 
been taken from the Patent Office fund. In May 
of 1854 an appropriation of $10,000 was made to 
the Treasury Department from the general fund 
for the collection of agricultural statistics and the 
distribution of seeds and cuttings, all such work 
to be under the supervision of the Commissioner 
of Patents — Charles Mason. In August of 1854 
Congress made another appropriation for agricul­
tural work, this time for $25,000. From that time 
on, the appropriations were made directly from 
the Federal treasury and in 1855 the Patent Of-
CHARLES MASON AND AGRICULTURE 19
flee was reimbursed for funds used for agricul­
tural purposes to the extent of $40,078.
With more funds available the work of collect­
ing and testing new plants and seeds was ex­
tended and systematized, but the conscientious 
Commissioner was greatly concerned to avoid the 
wastes and abuses which had brought discredit 
and contempt upon this branch of the service. “It 
certainly was never the purpose of Congress”, 
Mason wrote in his final report, “to convert this 
office into a common seed-store, intended to sup­
ply the public at large gratuitously with the means 
of planting their ordinary gardens.” Should the 
government resort to such gifts it would come to 
be regarded “as the fountain of favors and bene­
fits. The people would be gradually parting with 
that self-reliance which is the parent of energy 
and the mainspring of success in every undertak­
ing, and which is so necessary to the preservation 
of individual self-respect, and therefore of per­
sonal, and finally of national, independence.”
But there was more emphasis on experimenta­
tion and the search for new agricultural products. 
Among the importations of especial importance 
were Chinese yams, Chinese sugar cane or sor­
ghum — which led to the establishment of the 
Federal propagation garden and, finally, to an 
extensive and hopeful cultivation in the Middle
20 THE PALIMPSEST
West during the Civil War — and the tea plant, 
whose acclimation was to be a leading interest of 
the Commissioner of Agriculture under President 
Hayes. Of far greater value to the nation’s econ­
omy than these exotics were the new and superior 
grasses that were introduced.
With his assured standing as an engineer, 
farmer, and jurist, Mason had the respect and 
confidence of agricultural leaders in all regions. 
He corresponded and advised with such key men 
in the movement for an agricultural department 
and colleges as Charles B. Calvert of Maryland, 
John Delafield and Benjamin F. Johnson of New 
York, Henry F. French of Massachusetts, and 
many others. He carried on his seed and plant 
testing through State and local agricultural soci­
eties and secured the good will and support of the 
influential United States Agricultural Society. 
Appropriate interrelations with the Smithsonian 
Institution and its great director, Dr. Joseph 
Henry — which were to be greatly extended un­
der departmental organization — were auspici­
ously started.
But in spite of his success as Commissioner of 
Patents and agricultural promoter, Charles Mason 
was not entirely happy in his Washington office. 
For one thing, the salary of $3,000 paid to the 
Commissioner of Patents was hopelessly inade­
CHARLES MASON AND AGRICULTURE 21
quate for a man with Mason’s business interests 
and professional ability. He was confident that 
he could secure at least double that compensation 
from a Chicago firm of patent attorneys and his 
later professional career fully verified this esti­
mate. In the summer of 1855, he returned home 
with the expectation of retiring from office, but after 
characteristic deliberation he determined to con­
tinue to the end of the existing administration — 
and live strictly within his salary.
For a bureau chief, he was on terms of consid­
erable intimacy with President Franklin Pierce, 
who apparently felt that the western leader might 
influence his State’s delegation in favor of a re­
nomination. But Mason was never an effective 
politician, either for himself or the organization. 
His judicial temperament and disciplined mind 
were naturally opposed to the political “game” as 
conducted in his day. He came into sharp dis­
agreement with Buchanan’s Secretary of the In­
terior over removals and appointments and on Au­
gust 1, 1857, he resigned from an office that, in the 
judgment of all impartial observers, he had con­
ducted with signal credit and effectiveness. At 
various times he was mentioned for Commissioner 
of the Department of Agriculture, created in 1862, 
and for Secretary of the Department of the In­
terior, but his ambition for public employment was
22 THE PALIMPSEST
not sufficient to bring the requisite maneuvers and 
concessions.
Amid the barrage of criticism of “patent office 
agriculture“ and the demands for an organization 
more in keeping with the dignity and relative im­
portance of the occupation, no one was more 
aware of the anomalous and uncertain status of 
the inadequate agricultural agency than the Com­
missioner himself. But while others made vague 
suggestions for some sort of a bureau or depart­
ment with functions largely unspecified, he pro­
posed a specific, economical, decentralized plan of 
action in which emphasis was to be placed upon 
the aims rather than upon control and direction.
In his final report — for 1856 — he pointed out 
that the great objective of scientific investigation 
might be carried on in one of two ways. One 
would involve the establishment of regional ex­
perimental farms. Such a plan might be feasible 
for the Old World, but it involved a centralized 
bureaucracy that would not be tolerated under the 
American system. The preferable alternative was 
to coordinate existing State and local agencies 
through the supervisory activity of an “experi­
mental agriculturist“ who could arrange with indi­
viduals and societies for conducting experiments 
and make an annual report of the results. The 
annual expense of such an official with two assis­
CHARLES MASON AND AGRICULTURE 23
tants would be, Mason estimated, about six thou­
sand dollars.
To the possible objection that such appropria­
tion was “beyond constitutional warrant", the 
Commissioner argued that it was as fully justified 
as the provision for training for defense, the pro­
motion of commerce, and the protection of manu­
factures. What the agricultural interests sought, 
he argued, was parity treatment: let the govern­
ment serve all interests or disregard all.
It seemed “manifestly just and proper that com­
merce, manufactures, and agriculture — the three 
great branches of national industry and wealth — 
should be regarded with equal favor by Con­
gress." The farmers looked not “for any special 
favor," but had a “right to expect equality." If 
all interests were to be unaided they would be sat­
isfied to take their chance with the rest, “but, 
while, at the common expense, the favor of govern­
ment is almost lavished upon the other great 
branches of industry, they expect something for 
themselves. This expectation is so reasonable, 
that the favorable consideration of Congress is 
confidently invoked."
Even so reasonable and modest a proposal went 
too far for a State-rights administration and con­
gressional majority. The realization of the aims 
of the pioneer champions of agriculture on a parity
24 THE PALIMPSEST
basis awaited the necessities and organized pres­
sure of a more fully commercialized and class-con­
scious occupational interest and the consequent 
broadened conceptions of the functions of govern­
ment in promotion, regulation, and direction.
All the same, the foundations were being laid. 
Considering the rudiments of organization estab­
lished and the precedents of service inaugurated, 
the Patent Office agricultural division may be re­
garded as the beginning of the Department of 
Agriculture and Charles Mason may properly be 
classed as the forerunner of Iowa s distinguished 
and influential heads of what has become “one of 
the largest agencies of government in the world.’’
E a r l e  D. Ross


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