16 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



of that 1200,000 will be 41 cents and 6 mills. Suppose a 

 young man should take a farm when twenty-one years of 

 age, and stay until he is sixty-one. If that tax went on 

 during that time, the sum total for the forty years would be 

 about $16. You cannot clear a single tall elm, miaided, for 

 that sum of money; if you can, you can do better than I. 

 You cannot go through a row of ordinary apple trees and 

 clear the gypsy moth from it for $16, and clear it thoroughly. 

 You are simply paying a premium to the State to protect 

 you from this insect. You pay some insurance company a 

 larger premium than that to protect your buildings from fire. 



Are you willing to allow this insect to come over into this 

 beautiful territory and devastate this valley, and you have to 

 fight it yourselves, when the State can do it so much better 

 and cheaper than you can do it? If, on the other hand, 

 the State will exterminate the insect, as the Board of Agri- 

 culture is working to have it do, how much better that will 

 be. I believe this is a matter that you should consider your- 

 selves, individually. Is it cheaper for you to pay a tax and 

 have the insect exterminated, or let it go and you fight it 

 yourselves ? 



Mr. N. B. Baker (of Savoy). When I came on the 

 Board there was no one more skeptical in regard to the 

 gypsy moth. I live in a town in the north-western part of 

 the State, in a place where we have never been troubled with 

 the gypsy moth. I went onto the infested grounds with the 

 committee and some of the members of the Board three years 

 ago this coming winter, and I saw the men at work. I 

 became much interested, because I knew when I went back 

 home the people would question me in regard to the gypsy 

 moth. I saw what the men were doing. I thought they 

 ought to cut the woods down and burn them up. It seemed 

 to me that that would wind up the whole business. They 

 told me that the owners did not want the trees cut, and they 

 had to use other methods. I tell you I have become con- 

 verted in regard to this gypsy moth matter. I know that 

 pest as I have seen it in Maiden. No better class of men 

 ever worked for the State than the men employed by the 

 Board of Agriculture. There wasn't any " funn}'' " work. 

 The roll was called in the morning, and they went to work 



