No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 395 



ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR BRUMBAUGH 



Mr, Chairman aud Geutlemen: I had the pleasure a year ago, 

 at the meetiug of your body, to speak briefly to you down in the 

 other part of the city. We have now passed through one year of 

 our work and are up here onthe Hill and it is a peculiar source 

 of pleasure and of gratitude to me that we can meet under - 

 the peaceful and satisfactory auspices that surround us here 

 this beautiful morning in our Capitol Building. You gather from 

 all parts of Pennsylvania; each of you knows in a very intimate 

 way some one section of this great imperial Commonwealth, and if 

 in some way we could build together what each one knows and make 

 out of it a composite picture representing what all of us know, 

 there would arise in our souls a picture of the finest Commonwealth 

 that God ever set in the world. That is your heritage and mine, and 

 it is a source of gratitude just to be born and to live in as finer a\ 

 state as Pennsylvania, and I should like, this morning, first of all, 

 to impress upon you the fact that Pennsylvania is a fine, splendid 

 place in which to live, in which to rear your children and in which 

 to perform your daily duties. Don't get into your soul the thought 

 that by migrating elsewhere you could largely improve your con- 

 ditions. It is incumbent upon you and incumbent upon me to make 

 the conditions here in Pennsylvania so fine that we will all be glad 

 to stay and to welcome others to help build up our great Common- 

 wealth. (Applause) It may be known to you, I think it ought to 

 be, that during this year it has been my conscientious endeavor to 

 try to improve the agricultural conditions of Pennsylvania because 

 her soil is her permanent and splendid asset; not what is under it, 

 but what it itself is and that which springs from it under the care 

 and cultivation of wise and prudent men in Pennsylvania. Now 

 anything that w^e can do, as a people, in our organized and official 

 capacity, we ought to do to increase the returns, the rewards of in- 

 dustry upon the soil of Pennsylvania. Substantially 11% of all 

 our people are farmers, are engaged in this occupation of producing 

 food for the other part of our population. The number is too small 

 and there should be an increase in the number of people who culti- 

 vate the soil of Pennsylvania. 



That is a serious matter to which you have turned in one way 

 or another probably during all the years with which you have had to 

 do officially with that problem. So long as we buy food in large 

 quantities from outside the Commonwealth, so long as our people are 

 dependent upon foreign markets for the food to sustain them in their 

 daily toil, we are not working Pennsjdvania to its maximum service 

 to itself, so that anything that w^e can do that would improve that 

 condition ought to commend itself in a very definite and in a very 

 practical way to all of us. 



Just in a word. I was convinced a year ago and I still entertain 

 the thought that if we can put good roads to the farms of Pennsyl- 

 vania so that it will be easy to transport the crops to the market, 

 that within itself is an important service, and I submit to you, con- 



