No. 4.] OUR AGRICULTURAL ADVANCE. 93 



and onions. Such a system is evidently very crude and 

 primitive, when compared with a specialized system of farm- 

 in."-, in which each farm or each locality produces those 

 crops which can be grown to greatest advantage. 



It requires no elaborate argument to show that we have 

 developed certain specialties to some extent. Cape Cod is 

 famous for its cranberries and the Connecticut valley for its 

 tobacco growing. But, since I have been following the 

 statistical line thus far, I will add a few figures to illustrate 

 this principle of localization. 



For this illustration we may very properly select the 

 county of Suffolk, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where, 

 as some folks believe, the highest degree of specialization, 

 refinement and advancement known anywhere in the world 

 exists. Now, in the city of Boston, where the agricultural 

 products in 1895 amounted to $615,562,* the greenhouse 

 business predominates, furnishing 48 per cent, or nearly 

 one-half, of the entire amount. In the city of Chelsea, 

 greenhouse products still lead, to the extent of 52 per cent 

 of the whole amount. In the town of Revere, however, 72 

 per cent of the produce was vegetables in 1895. In the town 

 of Winthrop, dairy products led the list, to the extent of 

 30 per cent of the whole. By selecting individual towns in 

 different parts of the State, still more striking cases of local- 

 ization can be found ; but the figures already given serve to 

 bring out the point. There can be no doubt but that agri- 

 culture is advancing rapidly in this respect also. 



Special Lines of Development. 

 The next point which I wish to bring out is not so well 

 illustrated by the statistics of the Census Bureau. There 

 are many things about any census which are hard to under- 

 stand ; and one of the hardest of them is, why such different 

 subjects should be covered, and why the treatment should 

 be so diverse from one decennial period to another. There 

 are many interesting data in each census report which 

 would be ten times as valuable as they are could the}^ be 



* Census of Massachusetts, 1895, p. 281. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 

 Boston, 1899. 



