Carl Edwin LADD

  General Notes:

Dictionary of American Biography; Sup #3, 1947: 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 York 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 elaxation 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

He died of a heart attack.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation. Agricultural Educator

Carl married Lucy Francis CLARK. (Lucy Francis CLARK was born on an unknown date and died on an unknown date.)

Carl next married Camilla UNKNOWN.