Excerpts: I shall not attempt in this brief summary to discuss progress in the whole broad field of social science. It seems to me more useful here to think of developments in the Department of Agriculture and the State colleges and universities than to wander too far afield. One cannot, as I have done in the past few years, examine the developments in the Department of Agriculture without being impressed by the great progress that has been made; in the improvement of basic data; in the development of analytical techniques and in the application of research findings to practical problems. My comment here refers principally to economic research. The economic studies and service work of the Department seem to me to fall roughly into three major categories: 1. The collection of basic data, here the Department has, in my opinion, made its greatest contribution. Without this enormous body of raw material for analytical work, most of the agricultural economics research both in and outside the Department would have been impossible. The United States now has a growing body of basic data that is incomparably better than that of any other nation in the world. 2. The Department has made a sizable contribution in the form of analytical studies. This phase of its work is less fully developed than its data gathering activities and perhaps always will be. The analytical work has, in my opinion, suffered a serious setback in the decision to break up the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. 3. There has been a very large development of what is sometimes called "operating research," that is, quick assembling of information needed in making administrative decisions, and rather rough and hurried analyses pertaining to some immediate problem. The trend in the last year or two, and perhaps in most of the years since 1930, has been in that direction.