No. 4.] REPORT OF SECRETARY. 11 



have been formed, and, through a widely conducted campaign 

 of advertising, people right from our own section have been 

 induced to go and settle on these lands, not paying much 

 money down, but in reality bonding themselves for a long term 

 of years, during which time they receive little for their labor, 

 and often have to live under conditions which they would not 

 put up with in their original homes. That persons from foreign 

 countries are most often used in these enterprises is true, and 

 they are more likely to succeed in them, but the fact should 

 not be lost sight of that in their success they are getting control 

 of the land and by so doing are sooner or later going to control 

 the country. 



The potential wealth of our soil is enormous. Whether we 

 use it for any branch of agriculture or forestry, not an acre of 

 Massachusetts land should be idle. It is all adapted to some 

 use, and the criticism which we most often hear from travelers 

 in our State, "that there is so much waste land here," should 

 not hold true for long. 



Our exports of agricultural crops to foreign countries have 

 never been so great, and there seems to be an increasing de- 

 mand for them. That this will not continue after the war which 

 is now devastating Europe can be no better expressed than by a 

 quotation from the latest report of the Pennsylvania State 

 Board of Agriculture, where one of the speakers said: "It is 

 hardly to be expected that impoverished countries and dead 

 people will be good customers." 



We in America have escaped the frightful devastation caused 

 by the war, but when we consider that no matter what our 

 momentary prosperity may be, the awful waste in human life 

 and energy and in material will have to be made up sometime, 

 and that largely from the soil, it brings the losses very nearly 

 to agricultural losses. The enormous quantity of nitrogen, 

 potash and other elements going into the manufacture of ex- 

 plosives is taking these elements directly out of the farmer's 

 hands, increasing the cost of these products, and materially 

 reducing the known supply. In other words, elements which 

 should go to the upbuilding of humanity are now being used 

 to destroy humanity, and in the most terrible way the world 

 has ever seen. 



