1280 New York State Agricultural Society 



Within the past decade, your urban popuhition has increased 

 25 per cent., while jour rural popuhition has increased but 0,6 of 

 1 per cent., or practically nothing. There has evidently been set 

 in motion in this state an exodus from the farm to town or village. 



The situation is still more striking when we examine into the 

 statistics of your farming lands for the past ten years. In 1900 

 you had 226,720 improved farms, while in 1910 this number had 

 dropped to 215,597, or a decrease in ten years of 5 per cent. To 

 be more specific, the improved farm lands in New York State in 

 1900 amounted to 15,600,000 acres, while in 1910 there 

 were only 14,8-4-4,000 acres, a decrease in ten years of 756,000 

 acres in your improved farming area. 



No state offers a more inviting field for the development of 

 diversified agriculture under an intensive system of management, 

 than the great State of New York. You have a consuming popu- 

 lation of millions of people, and the finest system of railway and 

 water transportation facilities in the world. There are millions 

 of immigrants pouring through the gateway of Ellis Island, thou- 

 sands of whom would be far happier and more contented if em- 

 ployed in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture in your great state, 

 instead of striving against labor competition and the gaunt wolves 

 of poverty and misery, which must be largely their portion in the 

 great metropolis by the sea. 



New England has less improved land in farms to-day than it 

 had in 1850. The acreage of improved farming lands in the 

 Middle Atlantic States, in which this state is located, reached its 

 maximum in 1880, and has steadily declined since that date. It 

 might be said in explanation of these conspicuous adverse condi- 

 tions, that they are due to the movement of agriculture to the 

 more attractive farming sections of the western states. This may, 

 in a measure, account for the decline in your agricultural industry, 

 but there must be local reasons, because clearly no section of the 

 United States presents more inviting distributing market centers, 

 and your lands are as fertile and as susceptible to large produc- 

 tions per acre, as any other in the nation. 



What you need to overcome the difficulties which confront you 

 is cooperative effort and the management of your farming opera- 

 tions in such a way as to secure fair and reasonable profits on the 



