22 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



of having the largest attendance of any in the United States, 

 — we won't talk of tainted money or economy, — I mean 

 the University of Chicago ; and he rose up, and in describ- 

 ing the universal decline of land values in the United States 

 said that the soil, as he expressed it, was " skinned," and 

 consequently farm products no longer figured in the wealth 

 of the New England States. He described with glowing- 

 words the magnificent opportunities of the west, and the fact 

 that farming was a failure in New England. It became nec- 

 essary for a certain State official, whose name I withhold, to 

 leave the chair and take the floor, and to explain to him that 

 we would be very glad in Massachusetts to learn of any great 

 industry in Illinois which annually produced $64,000,000, the 

 value of the farm products in Massachusetts alone. I think it 

 is higher than that ; $04,000,000 in 1905. It was interesting 

 to tell the gentleman in question that that has shown a steady 

 increase from year to year. It was interesting to remind 

 him that the abandoned farm department of the Common- 

 wealth of Massachusetts had itself been abandoned. It was 

 interesting to quote to him the increased market gardening; 

 the opportunities of raising small fruit ; the fact that a box 

 of Massachusetts cucumbers, raised by Brother Rawson here, 

 was worth the yield of a whole acre of Illinois wheat or corn ; 

 that the finest roses of a certain kind, the " Bridesmaid " 

 rose, — I think they are called that as they were primarily 

 raised at Wellesley, where the bridesmaids come from, and 

 the brides themselves too, oftentimes, — are raised here and 

 all through Massachusetts. All farm products, and especially 

 the dairy products and the poultry products, are raised all 

 over the Commonwealth. 



He came to me afterwards and said the economist didn't 

 regard those as agricultural products ; and I asked him if he 

 regarded the tomato a product of the fisheries, or the cucum- 

 ber a product of the mines, — a mineral. I think agriculture 

 in the public eye is too apt to be confined simply to the grow- 

 ing of crops and cereals. We don't recognize as Ave should 

 our own place among the States in this great and growing 

 industry. 



I like very much to quote a story — perhaps I have told 



