272 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



and Philadelphia at high prices. Now, why don't you do that in 

 Pennsylvania? Because you have no competition. Your butter is 

 produced to supply this local market, and it has no standard; but 

 the time has come when, in my judgment, there should be something 

 done in order to make a standard for butter in Pennsylvania. 



Now, the labor problem is connected with this matter of farm 

 machinery of which my friend, the Hindoo student, speaks. As an 

 illustration: Not long ago I rode on the train thirty miles in North- 

 ern Illinois. I counted the teams that were working on the land, 

 including teams hitched to wagons, and in going that thirty miles 

 I counted tAventy-five teams. Six were four-horse teams, two were 

 two-horse teams and the rest were three-horse teams. The two- 

 horse teams were near town, perhaps market gardeners. In other 

 words, three and four horses, weighing fifteen to sixteen hundred 

 pounds each, were doing the work that farmers used to do with 

 two one-thousand-pound horses, in order to meet the labor problem, 

 and that is one of the factors that makes land in Illinois worth a 

 hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars an acre, when land in some 

 parts of Pennsylvania, which raises crops worth more per acre, sell 

 for a good deal less mone}^ The relation of farm labor to the price 

 of farm land in the State of Pennsylvania is an important question, 

 and it may not be out of place to tell you, gentlemen, that there are 

 three questions — four questions — three questions that I have rec- 

 ommended to our Board of Trustees to be brought before the Legis- 

 latuie for an appropriation. One of them is the matter of the qual- 

 ity of butter in the State of Pennsylvania, by putting the question 

 to the factories themselves, and doing something to raise the stand- 

 ard of butter throughout the State; the next question, I think, 

 should be the study of fungus growths as related to the orchardists 

 of Pennsylvania, and the third question should be this question of 

 farm labor, as it affects the relation between the cost of labor and 

 the price of land. Our Board of Trustees went before the Legisla- 

 ture last winter, and asked for about $25,000 a year for the purpose 

 of studying these questions, but the Legislature, for some reason, 

 did not make the appropriation. I think it is only fair to the 

 officers of Pennsylvania State College for you to know why these 

 subjects M'ill not be studied there this year; but if you feel as we 

 do, we shall ask you for your influence when the next Legislature 

 will be asked in two j^ears, for at least as large an appropriation. 



Now, there is another question, which is perhaps a rather delicate 

 one, and that is in relation to certain phases of our tax system. T 

 am convinced that certain phases of our tax system need careful 

 study. I do not refer now to the method of raising taxes, but to that 

 which the nation and vState demands, and the manner of their distri- 

 bution; for it is a question whether the taxes raised by the nation and 

 by the State are properly distributed. The taxes of Pennsylvania 

 amount to twenty-five to thirty million of dollars annually, and 

 while they are spending twenty-five or thirty million on State gov- 

 ernment, they are spending eighty million for national purposes^ — 

 fifteen for the army, thirty for the navy and so on. The last Legis- 

 lature appropriated about a quarter of a million, two hundred and 

 fifty thousand dollars, for the purpose of studying agriculture, and 

 the promotion of agricultural experiments, while at the same time 

 we are compelled to contribute to the National Department of Agri- 



