He supported him on all occasions; he pled his cause with great eloquence before the General Education Board, whose purse strings were liberally unloosed in behalf of the Knapp work; in his writings, in speeches, in letters, in all forms of public advocacy, he insisted that Dr.Knapp had found the solution of the agricultural problem.

The fact is that Page regarded Knapp as one of the greatest men of the time.

His feeling came out with characteristic intensity on the occasion of the homely reformer's funeral.

"The exercises," Page once told a friend, "were held in a rather dismal little church on the outskirts of Washington.

The day was bleak and chill, the attendants were few--chiefly officials of the Department of Agriculture.