lO AGRICULTURK OF MAINE. 



Thousands of farms in the State of Maine are today in the 

 hands of the descendants of those who received their grant to 

 this piece of land when it was a wilderness, and they are at- 

 tached to it as they are to nothing else in the world. The reason 

 that so little headway is made in dealing with the agricultral 

 community by business interests is, that they cannot conceive 

 this particular phase of the question. The agricultural com- 

 munity is not, and does not intend to be, lured into any scheme 

 by which it may, by accident, or otherwise, lose the title to its 

 land. 



The tendency of agitation from men who consider themselves 

 public benefactors has been to treat the farm from one of the 

 two city standpoints — either as a food-producer, in order that 

 food may be cheap, or as a freight-producer, that transporta- 

 tion companies may declare big dividends. Both these condi- 

 tions are resented by the agricultural community and very 

 justly, too. 



Recently there has come a third element into the conflict in 

 the nature of inspection. This was first brought to public at- 

 tention by the Boston Board of Health. The Portland Board 

 of Health immediately began to feel as though the Boston 

 Board of Health was doing something that made it very popular 

 and at once began a series of agitations for inspections, follow- 

 ing in the footsteps of the Boston Board of Health. 



BOARDS OF HEALTH AND WHERE THEIR RIGHT OF INSPECTION 



BEGINS AND ENDS. 



The Boston Board of Health, within the past few years, 

 has assumed the right to send a stripling to the State of Maine 

 to inspect the farm homes where milk was produced, if the pro- 

 ducer was unfortunate enough to be obliged to sell milk that 

 ultimately went to Boston. This young gentleman seems to 

 act without any special method or system of action. Two places 

 side by side — one equally as good as the other — one is rejected 

 and the other accepted. In the case of the one that is rejected, 

 the product is excluded for a few days or a week, by the cream- 

 ery to which he has been selling and then, with the slightest 

 apology of fixing up or cleaning up, the milk is again accepted. 

 This inspection is without law and without authority. 



