18 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



all interested, — though I know that such discussion is most 

 profitable and valuable, — but I believe that it should 

 assume and take charge of the agricultural interests so far 

 as the State is connected with them and is to have 

 any influence over them. I have shown my belief 

 during the year by certain recommendations in that direc- 

 tion. As you know, I recommended a transfer to this 

 Board of the duties of one commission, and I believe that 

 great good has come from that transfer. That was purely 

 executive work. I also most strongly urged, when the law 

 was under discussion for the creation of a dairy bureau, — a 

 most wise and necessary law, as it seems to me, — I urged 

 that- that bureau should be created out of the Board of Agri- 

 culture, and that its work and its duties should be under the 

 supervision of this important Board. I think that you 

 might well consider during your deliberations, either at this 

 meeting or at some later meeting, whether there are not 

 other duties, exercised perhaps now by other bodies in this 

 Commonwealth, which might well come under the supervision 

 of the Board of Agriculture, and their appropriations and 

 their salaries be transferred to this Board, and bureaus here 

 created, either with or without salaries, as seems best, for 

 doing the executive work that is important to agriculture. 

 It seems to me that the value of that w r ould be that this 

 great Board would stand responsible for the execution and 

 enforcement of the laws in which you are specially and 

 vitally interested ; that there would be one great, important 

 central body, divided into bureaus, to be sure, but exercis- 

 ing constant supervision over the work of these bureaus ; 

 that there would be this one great central Board closely in 

 touch with agriculture, that would stand responsible for the 

 enforcement of laws in which agriculture is interested ; and 

 then it would come with great influence and weight to any 

 Legislature with suggestions for the improvement of those 

 laws or for the making of new ones. 



One other suggestion, and I have finished. You all know 

 that soon we are to have a World's Fair. I am sure you 

 know the great interest our Commonwealth takes in that 

 fair. Whatever difference of opinion may have existed 

 in the past over the minor question of where the fair should 



