UFFICIAJ^ DUCUMKNT. No. 7. 



TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT 



OF THE 



Secretary of Agriculture. 



LIBRAR. 



NEW VORK 



GaRUB; 



Departmeut of Agriculture, 

 Harrisbuig, Pa., Jan. 1, 1907. 



To His Excellency, Samuel W. Pennjpacker, Governor of Pennsyl- 

 vania : 



Sir: In compliance with the requirements of the Act of Assembly, 

 creating a Department of Agriculture of Pennsylvania, I have the 

 honor to submit my report of said Department for the year 1906. 



The past year has marked much advance in the agriculture of 

 Pennsylvania. The swing toward the West of the pendulum of 

 agricultural progress is slacking and a new era appears to be setting 

 in for the farms and farmers of the Eastern states. 



There was a time when this was the leading farming state of the 

 Union, a time when civilization was but feeling its way beyond the 

 Allegheny Mountains. As Ohio and, later, the other states of the 

 Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri valleys developed, the center of 

 the agricultural industry moved steadily westward. The virgin, 

 fertile lands of the West were given free to settlers, who divided the 

 prairies into productive farms, the products of which were taken to 

 the eastern markets upon the railroads that rapidly gridironed the 

 new country and made possible the most marvellous development the 

 v>^orld has ever seen. The agriculture of the West developed more 

 rapidly than the population of the country, so that an enormous 

 surplus of grain, food stuffs and provisions was available for export. 

 The Western farmer farmed, at first, without regard to the future of 

 the soil. He mined and marketed the great stores of surplus fer- 

 tility that had been accumulating for centuries. His land produced 

 cheap and bountiful harvests. The settlers of the West were drawn 

 largel}^ from the older states of the East and for a generation many 

 of the most capable and ambitious as well as the restless sons of 



coEastern farmers migrated to the West and took part in its develop- 



§ment. 



"^^ Under such conditions of competition, the agriculture of the East, 



Jior a third of a century, languished. Prices were at such a level as 

 TO j-eudci' it difficult to coiulu^'t a fai'ui iM-ofitriblv unless it was de- 



'<r ( 3 ) 



