LADD, Carl Edwin

LADD, Carl Edwin: 25 Feb 1888-23 Jul 1943; Agricultural educator; born
McLean, Tompkins Co. NY., at the farm of his parents, Arnold D. & Mary E.
[MINEAH] LADD. He was their second son and the youngest of three children.
Both parents were native of Tompkins Co.; his father was descended from Daniel
LADD, who came from England to Massachusetts in 1634. Carl attended local
schools and at fifteen entered the Cortland Normal School , nearby, from which
he graduated in 1907. After a year as school principal in South Otselic, NY,
he enrolled in the College of Agriculture at Cornell University. He received
a B.S. degree in 1912 but stayed on for graduate study in the department of
farm management, specializing in cost accounting under the direction of Prof.
George F. WARREN, whose econimic ideas he was to share during the agricultral
crisis of the early 1930's. He received the Ph.D. in 1915.
That year LADD became director of the New York State School of
Agriculture at Delhi, one of six regional schools recently established to
provide a two-year program in applied agriculture. In 1917 he assumed overall
direction of the six schools as specialist in agricultural education in the
State Education Department at Albany. Two years later, he became director of
the State School of Agriculture at Alfred, NY. LADD returned to Cornell in
1920 as extension professor of farm management. He was made director of
extension work for the College of Agriculture and the College of Home
Economics at Cornell in 1924.
Carl LADD's career was built upon identification with the interests of
New Your agriculture. He regarded the extension service as a vehicle for
transmitting the needs of the farmer to the college and as an agency for
formulating research programs to meet those needs. As director of extension
he worked closely with the state's Farm Bureau Federation, using its county
units as local bases of operation for the College of Agriculture; through this
structure extension specialist were made available to individual farmers for
consultation. Under LADD, Cornell also continued its policy of aiding farmer
cooperatives such as the Dairymen's League.
In 1932 LADD became dean of the colleges of agriculture and of home
economics and director of the agricultural experiment station at Cornell.
A skilled administrator and mediator, he set up meetings at the college
between farmers and the businessmen who supplied their needs. Recognizing the
trend toward specialization in agriculture, he altered the focus of extension
work from general farming to particular commodities. He also kept Cornell in
the forefront of agricultural research, concentrating on such problems as
better food packaging, dehydration, and the artificial breeding of livestock.
He set up a special interdepartmental research and extension project designed
to expand the market for potatoes, an important state product, and encouraged
the development of the frozenfood industry in New York state.
LADD's influence in agricultural matters extended beyound the campus. He
had become widely known to the farming public at large through the columns of
the American Agriculturist, edited by his close friend Edward R. EASTMAN.
Sensitive to the techniques of public relations, he maintained contacts at
Albany and Washington and with the newspaper publisher Frank GANNETT. LADD
served as secretary of the State Agricultural Advisory Commission under Gov.
Franklin D. ROOSEVELT, and later as chairman; he became chairman of the New
York State Planning Council in 1936; and was the director of the Federal Land
Bank at Springfield, MA, a major source of credit for Northeastern farmers.
LADD's reaction to the agricultural program of the New Deal was
ambivalent. He supported the Agricultural Adjustment Act as a temporary
expedient and reconized the need for government assistance, but objected to
the degree of central planning envisaged by the Roosevelt administration. As
new federal agencies concerned with the farmer were created, LADD sought with
considerable success to have them administered by the existing network of
county agents that made up the extension service of the various land-grant
colleges. The matter was formalized at a conference in 1938 between
representatives of the colleges and the federal Department of Agriculture at
which a compromise [the Mount Weather Agreement] was worked out by LADD.
LADD was gregarious and outgoing. He had a romantic view of America's
rural past, yet it was his conviction that farms should be managed like
businesses and their performance measured by business standards. He found
relaxation on his own farm near Freeville, NY. On 09 Mar 1912, LADD married
Camilla Marie COX of South Otselic, NY, by whom he had one daughter, Elizabeth
Marie. Following the death of his first wife in 1917, he married Lucy Frances
CLARK of Brandford, VT, on 16 July 1918; they had two sons, Carl Edson and
Robert Daniel. In religion, LADD was a Presbyterian. While still active as
dean, he died of a coronary attack at Freeville at the age of fifty-five and
was buried at McLean, NY.

[With Edward R. EASTMAN, LADD wrote a romanticized account of farm boyhood,
Growing Up in the Horse and Buggy Days (1943). Biographical sources: Gould
P. COLMAN, Education & Agriculture: A Hist. of the NY State College of
Agriculture at Cornell Univ. (1963); Ruby Green SMITH, The People's Colleges
(1949); Nat. Cyc. Am. Biog., XXXIV, 148; Who Was Who in America,
vol II (1950); New York Times opbituary, 24 July 1943. LADD's administrative
files as director of extension and dean are in the Cornell Univ. Archives.]
G.P. COLMAN
Dictionary of American Biography; Sup #3, 1947
submitted by: Donald L. LADD