Just twenty years after his honored father, the late Martin Mohler, retired from the same office, Jacob C. Mohler was inducted into the office of secretary of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture. However, for more than twenty years he had been connected with the state board, and was assistant secrstary for many years before he took the chief responsibilities of that office.
As a young man he had a practical training that eminently fitted him for his present duties. Old methods and ideals are especially hard to brush aside for newer and more practical ones, and Mr. Mohler is one of the newer and more progressive type of modern Kansas developers.
He was born on his father’s farm in Osborne County, Kansas, April 7, 1875, was reared there and in Shawnee County, and came to know all about the details of Kansas farming by practical experience. He attended the district schools, and after his father moved to Topeka in 1888 he attended the academy of Washburn College. In 1892 he became a clerk in the State Board of Agriculture, in 1901 was promoted to assistant secretary, and in 1914 was made secretary.
Mr. Mohler had frequently called attention to the fact that while the wealth of Kansas rests upon agriculture, the state had never given more than a meager material assistance to the agricultural interests. In his office as secretary Mr. Mohler had already introduced some important innovations. Each particular branch of husbandry had its separate place, and records are kept showing its career and development. Already the department had made a name of which it can be proud. It is conducted along practical lines, and Mr. Mohler measures its value in proportion as it is most closely in touch with the actual farmers of the state. Starting with an ideal to make the State Agricultural Department represent to Kansas what the United States Department of Agriculture means to the farmers of the entire nation, it had already become possible to advance the service of the state board beypond that ideal. Original research is one of the features that have placed the Kansas Department of Agriculture at the front among the various states of the Union.
As a feature of this work only recently the various assessors have been instructed, in addition to their routine work, to make reports from their townships on such subjects as cowpeas, sudan grass, sweet clover, feterita, cream separators, silos, tractors and registered live stock. The members composing the present and more recent boards have accomplished wonders in developing the agricultural interest of the state.
Much of his usefulness is due to the fact that Mr. Mohler. had a permanent enthusiasm for his work. There is hardly any phase of Kansas agriculture with which he is not acquainted at first hand, and he had succeeded in a large degree in concentrating his ideas and ideals into practical service to the state. In other ways he is a normal, up-to-date Kansan, occupying the position of the average man and being identified with the various interests with which he is surrounded.
Mr. Mobler is a member of the Jayhawker, Country, Press and Topeka Commercial clubs, the Kansas Historical Society, is a member of the Episcopal Church and belongs to the thirty-second degree of Seottish Rite Masonry. He is also treasuror of the State Temperance Union, secretary of the Kansas Flood and Water Congress, organized in 1915, and chairman of the Kansas Entomological Commission.
By his marriage to Miss Ruth McClintock, a daughter of J. C. McClintock, A. M., M. D., LL. D., which was celebrated October 30, 1901, he had two sons, John McClintock and James Calhoun, and one daughter, Marcia.