CHRIS CUMO
The Carmichael Case: Animal Science
At
The Ohio Agricultural Experiment
Station, 1905-1921
The late nineteenth century was an
important period in Ohio because agri-
cultural education and science began to
take shape then. Farmers had wel-
comed the Morrill Act of 1862, and the
Ohio legislature translated it into in-
stitutional form by creating The Ohio
Agricultural and Mechanical College in
1870, which the Board of Trustees
renamed The Ohio State University in
1878.1 Its creation, however, meant
little for agricultural experimentation.
Norton Townshend, the agricultural
professor, talked about the value of exper-
imentation, but by his own admission he
was overwhelmed by teaching du-
ties and had little time to spare for
research.2 The burdensome demands of in-
struction remained a complaint; as late
as 1947 Howard Bevis bemoaned the
University's inability to conduct
agricultural research because he could not di-
vert manpower and money from teaching
students.3
What experiments the University
conducted were oriented toward livestock,
a course which Townshend, who fancied
himself a stockman, had charted dur-
ing the 1870s.4 In contrast, he
manifested little enthusiasm for the plant sci-
ences. Although Townshend paid lip
service to the importance of conducting
crop experiments, he annoyed farmers by
allowing the College Farm to lan-
guish.5 Instead, he attempted
to mollify farmers by pleading lack of man-
power and funds. Only between 1877 and
1881, when agronomist Charles E.
Thorne managed it, did anyone perform
experiments with crops.
With the University committed to
teaching and incidentally to livestock re-
search, the question of what institution
would devote itself full time to agri-
Chris Cumo is a history instructor at
Kent State University, Tuscarawas Campus.
1. For a convenient summary of these
developments, see Robert E. Whitmoyer, The View
from the Towe; An Anecdotal History of the Wooster Campus at OARDC (Wooster, 1992), 4.
2. Proceedigs of the Forty-Second
Annual Session of the Ohio State Agricultural Convention
(Columbus, 1887), 86.
3. Howard L. Bevis to E. C. Dix, 26
February 1947, The Ohio State University Archives,
Record Group 3/h/2/1, Columbus, Ohio.
4. Norton S. Townshend, "Lecture
Before the Shorthorn Breeders Convention," in Thirty-
Fourth Annual Report of the Ohio
State Board of Agriculture, 1879 (Columbus,
1880), 464-66.
5. Charles E. Thorne, "The Romance
of Ohio Agriculture: The Ohio
Agricultural
Experiment Station Was Fifth Such
Institution," Ohio Farmer, 16 April 1927, 6.
32 OHIO
HISTORY
cultural experimentation and to crop
growers became acute by the early
1880s. After false starts, the state
legislature created the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station in 1882.6 Soil
exhaustion was then Ohio's most in-
tractable farm problem, and Townshend's
failure to do more than talk about it
gave the Station entree into crop
experimentation.7 In 1887
the Station's
Board of Control appointed Charles
Thorne as director to tackle this prob-
lem.8 The Board could not
have chosen a better director since Thorne had ded-
icated his life to agricultural
improvement through science. In 1863 and 1864
he had attended Antioch College and
Michigan Agricultural College, each for
one year, before returning to Ohio to
work on the family farm and write free-
lance articles for agricultural
journals. In 1877 Townshend hired
him as
foreman of the College Farm. It had
languished to that point, but Thorne
promptly initiated trials with corn,
wheat, and oats, and in so doing estab-
lished a reputation among farmers as a
serious experimenter. Townshend
showed little enthusiasm for crop
experimentation, however, and in 1881
Thorne left the farm to join
Springfield's Farm and Fireside as associate edi-
tor, where he became one of Ohio's most
prominent advocates for agricultural
experimentation in general and for
improving soil fertility in particular. For
Thorne the improvement of soil fertility
was tantamount to a religious cru-
sade, and as director he concentrated
manpower and money toward his goal.
To achieve his aim, in 1892 he moved the
Station from the rich alluvial lands
along the Olentangy river to the
exhausted soils of an abandoned farm in
Wooster, where he established "a
practical laboratory" for experiments with
crop rotations, fertilizers, and manure.9
The Station's crop-science orientation
was plain to Oscar E. Bradfute, an
avid cattle breeder who was president of
the Board of Control between 1902
and 1905.10 Bradfute argued that the
Station could not justify allocating
6. "Sketch of the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station," First Annual Report of the Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station for
1882 (Columbus, 1883), 19.
7. "Agricultural Meeting at
Lansing, Michigan," Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the Ohio State
Board of Agriculture (Columbus, 1880), 389; Charles E. Thorne, "The
Romance of Ohio
Agriculture: Soil Fertility and Orchard
Study First Work of Ohio Experiment Station," Ohio
Farmer, 23 April 1927, 6.
8. For biographical information on
Thorne, see "Charles Embree Thorne, 1846-1936," Ohio
Farmer, 14 March 1936, 6; "In Memory of Charles Embree
Thorne, 1846-1936,"
Administrative Circular 3 of the Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station [1936],
[1-7]; Robert W.
McCormick, "Norton S. Townshend,
M.D.: Antislavery Politician and Agricultural Educator,"
Unpublished Manuscript, 1988, Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station Archives, Wooster, Ohio,
208,219.
9. "Charles Embree Thorne," Ohio
Farmer, 6; Charles E. Thorne, "The Possible Wayne
Country Farm," Bulletin 304 of
the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station (November, 1916),
215-16.
10. Historical records officer Robert E.
Whitmoyer at Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station,
28 February 1994, transcript, Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station Archives, Wooster, Ohio,
2; Charles E. Thorne, Fifty-Year
Index to Personnel and Publications of the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station (Wooster: Bulletin 501 of the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station, 1932),
The Carmichael Case
33
money, energy, and time to animal
research. He was already spending his tax
dollars to see that this work was done
at the University and saw no reason
why he should spend more money for the
duplication of such study at the
Station. Instead, he advised the Station
to continue to focus on crop experi-
ments.
Moreover, its own internal events
reinforced an orientation toward crop ex-
perimentation and away from livestock
research. In 1899 bovine tuberculosis
swept through the Station's dairy herd,
killing seventeen cattle; Thorne
lamented the catastrophe as an
incalculable loss and admitted that he did not
expect the legislature to grant him
funds to replenish the herd. 11 To make
matters worse, fire consumed the dairy
laboratory and creamery in 1913; for-
tunately the cows were in their barn, a
separate structure, and suffered no
losses.12 Thorne did not
rebuild until 1915.13 Perhaps he was unable to ob-
tain sufficient appropriations until
then, or perhaps he had not perceived a
pressing need immediately to erect a new
lab and creamery. Either way, these
setbacks did nothing to invigorate
animal research at the Station.
Neither of these episodes, however,
compared in furor to the Carmichael
case. In 1905 the Board of Control had
appointed Berton E. Carmichael chief
of the Station's new Animal Husbandry
Department.14 The was a critical
time, for that year Thorne publicly admitted
for the first time that stockmen
had been criticizing the Station for
ignoring their interests.15 He attempted to
diffuse the attack, first, by blaming
the legislature which had never, he
charged, allocated sufficient funds for
the Station to pursue livestock research.
This assertion may have had merit. Since
Townshend's unsuccessful attempt
in 1880 to cajole the legislature into
creating an experiment station with a
ten-thousand dollar appropriation, no
one had pried from it much money for
agricultural research.16 Second, Thorne
argued that the Station could best
serve farmers by tackling their most
intractable problem. Given this, he was
obligated to pour his energies into
helping farmers improve soil fertility.
If Thorne could not spare himself in
service to stockmen, then this respon-
sibility fell to the new Animal
Husbandry chief. Carmichael had graduated
5.
11. Eighteenth Annual report of the
Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, 1899, 295-96;
Charles E. Thorne to Cleveland Provision
Company, 13 April 1899, Charles E. Thorne Letters,
14 March 1899 to 7 May 1900, No. 58,
Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station Archives,
Wooster, Ohio.
12. Thirty-Third Annual Report of the
Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year
Ending June 30, 1914 (Wooster, 1914), 22.
13. Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of
the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year
Ending June 30, 1915 (Wooster, 1915), 25.
14. [Charles E. Thorne], "The
Carmichael Case," [Long Version of an Unpublished
Manuscript], Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station Archives, Wooster, Ohio, 1.
15. Charles E. Thorne, "Report of
the Director," in Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station for
the Year Ending June 30, 1905 (Wooster,
1905), 7.
16. "Agricultural Meeting at
Lansing," 389.
34 OHIO HISTORY
from the University of Illinois in
spring 1905 with a B.S. in animal hus-
bandry, and upon arriving in Wooster he
initially worked "with great enthusi-
asm," apparently recognizing his
opportunity to create an animal research
program where none had previously
existed.17
Thorne was pleasantly impressed by
Carmichael's diligence and now saw
his opportunity to establish, at least,
a legitimate livestock research program.
In 1907 he hired E. B. Forbes, the
Station's first full-time scientist with a
Ph.D., to create a Nutrition
Department.18 Forbes appeared to be the right
man for the job. He had been a professor of animal nutrition
at the
University of Missouri, where, in
hog-raising territory, he had established a
reputation as an expert in the mineral
nutrition of swine. Thorne anticipated
that Forbes would make the Ohio Station
a center for hog nutrition studies
and, in so doing, win allegiance from
western Ohio's hog raisers.19
Carmichael, however, did not share
Thorne's enthusiasm for his new col-
league. He viewed all livestock studies
as his fiefdom and Forbes as a rival
lord, and thus deeply resented that he
had to cede most of his livestock nutri-
tion research to Forbes.20
Carmichael managed, however, to retain
the feeding trials of horses and cat-
tle by persuading Thorne that he was
nearing the climax of these investiga-
tions. In 1908 he published two
bulletins outlining the preliminary results
of these trails, promising a definitive
publication soon.
This was an empty assurance; he
thereafter ceased to work productively.
Instead he bought sixteen horses, fed
them to maturity and sold them. He
next purchased twenty Belgian fillies
for the ostensible purpose of beginning
breeding experiments. Although he
amassed a large herd during the next
decade, he failed to publish even one
account of this work.
While presumably engaged in this study
Carmichael asked Forbes, in late
1916 or early 1917, for permission to
use part of his laboratory to investigate
"the chemical composition of
meat."21 This was a clumsy incursion into the
latter's domain, and Forbes saw it as
such. He promptly refused, citing lack
of laboratory space and remarking that
even with space he would have de-
murred since Carmichael "had not
shown the courtesy and consideration essen-
tial to harmony in the joint use of the
same equipment."22
Forbes then apparently complained to
Thorne, who now intervened. On
January 18, 1917, he warned Carmichael
to drop his attempt to encroach on
Forbes' turf, reminded him of his
promise in 1908 to conclude his feeding tri-
17. [Thorne], "The Carmichael Case," [Long
Version], 1.
18. Twenty-Sixth Annual Report
of the
Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year
Ending June 30, 1907 (Wooster,
1907), 9.
19. [Thorne], "The Carmichael
Case," [Long Version], 1.
20. Ibid., 2.
21. Ibid., 2.
22. Ibid, 3.
The Carmichael Case 35 |
|
als with horses and cattle, and asked him to return to his research. This plea, couched in the most tactful language that Thorne could muster, failed to im- press Carmichael. Instead he fired a letter to Forbes the next day in which, making no reference to Thorne's admonitions, he accused him of wielding improper influence in determining the location of his laboratory.23 Forbes again approached Thorne and evidently asked him to silence Carmichael, a request which put Thorne in a difficult position. Years later he conceded that he should then have fired Carmichael because of his refusal to work and for his attack on Forbes. But Thorne was so eager to build a useful animal-science program that he held his tongue. He also did not fire Carmichael because he feared the public outcry that might ensue the dismissal of a departmental chief. Thorne's attempt to weather the storm appeared to have succeeded when, in January 1918, Forbes accepted a commission to serve in World War I as a
23 Ibid., 4. |
36 OHIO HISTORY
major in the Army's sanitary corps.24
Thorne believed that with Forbes an
ocean away for the foreseeable future,
the feud would subside. He even hoped
that Carmichael would finally return to
work and that he would be able, at
last, to boast a legitimate livestock
research program.
Instead, in a letter to the sanitary
corps that February Carmichael accused
Forbes of punching a subordinate. Worse,
in the midst of America's crusade
against the Kaiser, he disparaged him as
an unpatriotic lout who had refused
to buy liberty bonds and had never
attended the parades for Wooster's soldiers.
Although these charges ultimately did
not dissuade the Army from com-
missioning Forbes, they made public the
internecine squabble between
Carmichael and Forbes. Thorne was
predictably outraged and summoned
Carmichael to an emergency session of
the Board of Control on March 1.25
There Carmichael impressed no one by
hiding behind the excuse that he had
hoped to protect the Army from
unknowingly commissioning an unpatriotic
officer. The next day Thorne suspended
him without pay, and on March 7 the
Board fired him.
Carmichael immediately appealed to the
Ohio Civil Service Commission
for reinstatement. At a hearing on May
21 he argued that the Board had un-
fairly discharged him for making factual
statements to the Army. Carmichael
was a his best or worst, depending on
one's viewpoint, at this hearing, dis-
playing his ability to clutter an issue
with red herrings and to impugn others
on the pretext of faithfully following
orders. He now asserted that he had
only mailed his letter attacking Forbes
after Thorne had reassured him that it
was his duty to do so.26 This statement
was surely a lie, and when Thorne,
who represented the Board of Control at
this hearing, objected, Carmichael
shifted the ground to Forbes' character.
The fact that his character was irrele-
vant to the hearing did not deter
Carmichael, who now enlarged his original
assertions by claiming that Forbes had
taken a small plot at the Station for
his own uses on the pretext of making a
victory garden. Worse, Forbes had
pleaded poverty when refusing to buy
liberty bonds though he had sufficient
resources to drive a Buick. This was a
deft stab; Woosterites were plain folks
who drove Fords and viewed Buicks as
extravagant. Finally, Carmichael as-
serted that Forbes was so greedy that he
had attempted to draw his full salary
from the Station while in the Army.
For his part, Forbes had made himself an
easy target for these charges. He
had indeed struck a subordinate around
1910 over a minor incident but had
immediately apologized to him.27 The
charge of double-dipping, though a bit
more complicated, was essentially true.
Forbes had asked Thorne to continue
24. Ibid., 45.
25. Ibid., 7-11.
26. Ibid., 25-26.
27. Ibid., 30.
The Carmichael Case 37 |
|
paying him some portion of his salary so that his family would have adequate income during his absence.28 Although this would have been legal, Thorne had refused on the grounds that it was neither ethical nor in the Station's fi- nancial interest. Equally serious, Forbes had clumsily attempted to pose as an authority in the nutrition of human infants.29 He had joined the vitamin craze that followed discovery of the first vitamin in 1913. In 1916 he specu- lated that cows' milk plus the proper combination of vitamins constituted the perfect nourishment for human infants. Forbes was now straying recklessly into an area where he had no expertise. Worse, he had apparently failed to ap- preciate the obvious implication of this idea. If vitamin-fortified cows' milk was nutritionally superior to mothers' milk, then women had no business breast-feeding their babies. Rural Woosterites recognized that this implica- tion undermined the traditional female role as nurturer and were indignant: they wondered aloud why their tax dollars should support animal research that was so clearly subversive. Unwittingly perhaps, Forbes had vitiated support for livestock research and discredited himself at a time when the animal sci- ences were new and thus vulnerable at the Station. By the end of a day of testimony Carmichael had succeeded in casting
28. Ibid., 36. 29. Whitmoyer 1994, 3. |
38 OHIO HISTORY
Forbes, rather than himself, as the
villain, and the Commission promptly re-
instated him, deeming his attack on
Forbes as entirely appropriate.30 A crest-
fallen Thorne complained to Governor
James M. Cox that "the outcome of
this decision is that a man who has
discredited himself . . is permanently
fastened upon the payroll of the
State."
Since Thorne could not simply fire
Carmichael, the thought now occurred
to him that he might abolish his
position.31 On January 15, 1919, he in-
formed Carmichael that the Board was
consolidating Animal Husbandry and
Nutrition on February 1 and that Forbes
would assumed charge of the new
Animal Industry Department. Thorne justified
this move on January 19, an-
nouncing in The Wooster Republican that
the Board was obliged to unify
these departments since work in Animal
Husbandry had been "in abeyance for
ten years."32
If Thorne thought this maneuver would
eliminate Carmichael, he had mis-
calculated. Carmichael, persistent as
ever, sought a restraining order from
Lawrence Critchfield, judge of the Wayne
County Common Pleas Court, to
thwart the merger.33 His
argument that the Board members had conspired to
remove him apparently persuaded
Critchfield who on January 31 temporarily
enjoined the Board from united the two
departments.
The ruling provided Carmichael only a
brief respite since Thorne ordered
him on May 31 to vacate his residence in
one of the Station's houses on the
pretext that "it was urgently
needed for the housing of men whose duties made
it important that they should live near
their work."34 Carmichael was vulner-
able to this salvo; since his arrival in
Wooster he had lived on the Station's
grounds, an economy no doubt prompted by
his lack of an automobile and the
dearth of inexpensive housing in town.
Surely desperate, he filed suit against
Thorne and the other Board members in
the same court on June 6, asking
Critchfield permanently to prohibit
Board members from colluding to deprive
him of work and lodging.
The hearing, which began on July 22,
1919, and continued until December
30, 1920, was an unedifying spectacle.
On October 2, 1919, Critchfield held
Thorne in contempt and fined him one
hundred dollars for refusing to answer
whether Carmichael was still the chief
of Animal Husbandry.35 For his part
Carmichael could not explain why, since
his reinstatement in May 1919, he
had proposed fifteen different lines of
investigation, had never concluded the
feeding trials of 1908, and had not
published a single bulletin since 1908.
30. [Thorne], "The Carmichael
Case," [Long Version], 39.
31. Ibid., 40.
32. "Throne to Consolidate
Departments at The Experiment Station." The Wooster
Republican, 19 January 1919, 4.
33. [Thorne], "The Carmichael
Case," [Long Version], 40-41.
34. Ibid., 89.
35. Ibid., 90.
The Carmichael Case
39
Instead, he again relied on red herring
and ad hominem attacks to rescue him
from his ineptitude. On November 13,
1920, probably at Carmichael's be-
best, Dwight Lincoln and Grant Case,
secretary of the American Ramboulet
Sheep Breeders Association and president
of the Ohio Poultry Association re-
spectively, filed a joint lawsuit
against Thorne, charging him, first, with in-
competence stemming from "an
uncontrollable mania to be revenged upon
any employe[e] who differs from
him."36 Second and more serious, they al-
leged that Thorne had misused public
funds. At this point they produced the
audit of fiscal year 1918 in which John
Bliss, the chief examiner, uncovered
overpayment of one worker, increased pay
of another to cover medical ex-
penses, and a litany of waste, abuse,
and theft, including the disappearance of
a watermelon.37 Third, they
accused him of hindering the progress of animal
research at the Station.38 This
work had been "in a chaotic condition," they
asserted, until Carmichael had
determined to build a first-rate program; but
Thorne had harried him at every turn.
These allegations were specious. With
the exception of Carmichael, those
who knew Thorne, and Lincoln and Grant
probably did not, from farmhands
to administrators at the United States
Department of Agriculture, lauded his
integrity.39 The Auditor of
State had investigated Bliss' report and concluded
that Thorne had not misused any funds.40
Indeed, as the example of the
stolen watermelon underscores, Bliss was
an overzealous auditor who had
only magnified what was inconsequential.
Finally, Thorne had attempted to
coax Carmichael as tactfully as he could
to return to work. Carmichael rather
than Thorne had undermined animal
research.
Critchfield saw the absurdity of these
charges and dismissed them on
December 30. But on that day he also
ruled in Carmichael's favor, perma-
nently prohibiting Thorne and the other
Board members from unifying
Animal Husbandry and Nutrition and from
removing him from his resi-
dence.41 The Board had
undertaken such action, Critchfield ruled, to rid the
Station of Carmichael rather than to
unify two departments. But the Ohio
Civil Service Commission had earlier
reinstated Carmichael, and he could not
now be fired without cause.
At the critical juncture Thorne passed
the directorship to Carlos Williams,
36. Ibid., 141-42.
37.
"Criticism of Director Thorne," [Unpublished Manuscript], Ohio
Agricultural
Experiment Station, Wooster, Ohio, 5-12.
38. "Carmichael Case," [Long
Version], 145.
39. George Williams to Charles E.
Thorne, 29 June 1910, Charles E. Thorne Letters,
Queries, 1 May 1910 to 1 September 1910,
The Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station
Archives, Wooster, Ohio; "In Memory
of Charles Embree Thorne. 1846-1936," Administrative
Circular 3 of the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station [1936],
2-7.
40. "Carmichael Case," [Long
Version], 171-79.
41. [Charles E. Thorne], 'The Carmichael
Case," [Short Version of an Unpublished
Manuscript], Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station Archives, Wooster, Ohio, 7.
40 OHIO
HISTORY
the chief agronomist since 1903 and a
close friend and collaborator in his ex-
periments in improving soil fertility.42
The tumult over Carmichael appar-
ently delayed rather than hastened this
action. In February 1918 Thorne had
asked to retire at the end of that year,
conceding that the administrative bur-
dens of being director required a young
man's vitality whereas he was nearly
seventy-two.43 Retirement
then would afford him time, he hoped, to summa-
rize his lifetime of experiments with
crop rotations, fertilizers, and manure in
a single publication. Thorne suggested
that the Board appoint Williams as
his successor and allow him to resume
charge of the Soils Department. In
view of Carmichael's antics, however,
the other Board members asked Thorne
in March 1918 to shepherd the Station
through this crisis.44 Thorne agreed
only to a temporary extension of his
tenure and in January 1920 renewed his
request to retire, now at the end of
1920; this time the other Board members
acquiesced, and on December 30, 1920, he
turned over the reigns to
Williams.45
Thorne's retirement did not mean that
Carmichael had won. Now chief of
the Soils Department, Thorne could not
endure the spectacle of his nemesis
permanently thumbing his nose at him; he
immediately filed an appeal, and
the Court of Appeals finally saw
Carmichael's behavior for what it was: in-
subordination and dereliction of duty.46
On March 21, 1921, it upheld the
Board's decision to consolidate the two
departments and ordered Carmichael to
vacate his residence or face trespassing
charges. The next day a chastened
Carmichael returned his keys to Williams
and plunged into obscurity. At
last, after haggling with Carmichael for
more than a decade, Thorne had tri-
umphed.
But it was a Pyrrhic victory. Carmichael had disgraced himself, and
Forbes, who had never recouped his
reputation, had resigned at the end of
1920.47 Animal research,
inchoate before Carmichael's debacle, never fully
recovered. Not until Leo L. Rummell, a
journalist, businessman, and agri-
cultural enthusiast, became director in
1948 did the Station have a chief who
would admit any interest in livestock
research.48 And even then, Rummell
42. "Ohio Experiment Station,"
Ohio Farmer, 22 January 1921,4.
43. Charles E. Thorne to George E.
Scott, 24 February 1918, Folder: C. E. Thorne, Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station
Archives, Wooster, Ohio.
44. George E. Scott to Charles E.
Thorne, 2 Mach 1918, Folder: C. E. Thorne, Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station
Archives, Wooster, Ohio.
45. Charles E. Thorne to Board of
Control, Folder: C. E. Thorne, Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station Archives, Wooster,
Ohio.
46. "Carmichael Case," [Short
Version], 7.
47. Annual Report of the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station for the year Ended June 30,
1921 (Wooster, 1921), 20.
48. For biographical information about
Rummell, see "Leo L. Rummell," in "Seventy-First
Annual Report of the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station for the Year Ended June 30, 1950,"
Bulletin 705 of the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station (June
1951), 4; Helen Enlow, 75 Years
of Agricultural Research (Wooster: Public Relations Series 35 of the Ohio
Agricultural
The Carmichael Case
41
did not attempt to change the Station's
research orientation.
But the Carmichael case was not entirely
deleterious. It underscored that
the director oversaw the Station's daily
operations and that this function could
not easily be circumscribed. Neither
Carmichael nor his allies had been able
to overturn Thorne's decision. The case
also underscored that a few disen-
chanted stockmen could not derail the
Station's agenda. To the contrary, it
solidified that Station's focus on crop
experiments and enabled Thorne and his
successors to concentrate manpower and
money to a degree that would other-
wise have been impossible. In 1893
Thorne had launched an ambitious pro-
gram of experiments with crop rotations,
fertilizers, and manure and helped
farmers increase average corn, wheat,
and oat yields per acre by as much as
twenty percent between 1900 and 1919.49
This achievement was but the first
in a list of triumphs which has included
insect and disease resistant hybrid
corn and disease-resistant greenhouse
tomatoes and soybeans.50 Partly be-
cause of Carmichael the Ohio Station has
coaxed ever more bountiful crops
from the soil.
Experiment Station, 1957), 20-21;
"Leo L. Rummell," Biographical Files, The Ohio State
University Archives, Columbus, Ohio;
"Former OARDC Director Dies Tuesday in Arizona,"
Wooster Daily Record, 29 August 1980, 8; "Three Named to Ohio Hall of
Fame," Ohio
Farmer, 20 August 1966, 15.
49. Thirty-Ninth Annual Report of the
Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year
Ended June 30, 1920 (Wooster, 1920), 9.
50. Gene P. Hattel and William E.
Krauss, "Production Agriculture-Crops," Ohio Report on
Research and Development (July-August 1975), 57-59.
CHRIS CUMO
The Carmichael Case: Animal Science
At
The Ohio Agricultural Experiment
Station, 1905-1921
The late nineteenth century was an
important period in Ohio because agri-
cultural education and science began to
take shape then. Farmers had wel-
comed the Morrill Act of 1862, and the
Ohio legislature translated it into in-
stitutional form by creating The Ohio
Agricultural and Mechanical College in
1870, which the Board of Trustees
renamed The Ohio State University in
1878.1 Its creation, however, meant
little for agricultural experimentation.
Norton Townshend, the agricultural
professor, talked about the value of exper-
imentation, but by his own admission he
was overwhelmed by teaching du-
ties and had little time to spare for
research.2 The burdensome demands of in-
struction remained a complaint; as late
as 1947 Howard Bevis bemoaned the
University's inability to conduct
agricultural research because he could not di-
vert manpower and money from teaching
students.3
What experiments the University
conducted were oriented toward livestock,
a course which Townshend, who fancied
himself a stockman, had charted dur-
ing the 1870s.4 In contrast, he
manifested little enthusiasm for the plant sci-
ences. Although Townshend paid lip
service to the importance of conducting
crop experiments, he annoyed farmers by
allowing the College Farm to lan-
guish.5 Instead, he attempted
to mollify farmers by pleading lack of man-
power and funds. Only between 1877 and
1881, when agronomist Charles E.
Thorne managed it, did anyone perform
experiments with crops.
With the University committed to
teaching and incidentally to livestock re-
search, the question of what institution
would devote itself full time to agri-
Chris Cumo is a history instructor at
Kent State University, Tuscarawas Campus.
1. For a convenient summary of these
developments, see Robert E. Whitmoyer, The View
from the Towe; An Anecdotal History of the Wooster Campus at OARDC (Wooster, 1992), 4.
2. Proceedigs of the Forty-Second
Annual Session of the Ohio State Agricultural Convention
(Columbus, 1887), 86.
3. Howard L. Bevis to E. C. Dix, 26
February 1947, The Ohio State University Archives,
Record Group 3/h/2/1, Columbus, Ohio.
4. Norton S. Townshend, "Lecture
Before the Shorthorn Breeders Convention," in Thirty-
Fourth Annual Report of the Ohio
State Board of Agriculture, 1879 (Columbus,
1880), 464-66.
5. Charles E. Thorne, "The Romance
of Ohio Agriculture: The Ohio
Agricultural
Experiment Station Was Fifth Such
Institution," Ohio Farmer, 16 April 1927, 6.