LEGISLATIVE AIDS TO AGRICULTURE. 23 



with almost only the same exceptions, each one took money 

 from the treasury of the State raised by taxation. Led to ex- 

 amine how many of these 569 Acts and Resolves were in the in- 

 dex under the head of agriculture, I found there one only, the 

 indexical words of which are, " Agriculture, Board of, secre- 

 tary may employ a clerk," and the Act provides for expending 

 for clerical services, and for lectures, to be given before the 

 Board of Agriculture, the sum of fourteen hundred dollars. 

 What ! one Act only out of nearly six hundred, to promote ag- 

 riculture, which must yet be reckoned as the greatest single in- 

 dustrial interest of the State ; and the munificent sum of four- 

 teen hundred dollars to be expended for a clerk and lectures to 

 the Board of Agriculture. Why, that law and that money so 

 expended will not raise a single potato or suckle a single calf in 

 the State — always excepting the clerk who may be hereafter ap- 

 pointed under it. It is fair, however, to the law-making power 

 to say that they passed a Resolution appropriating the sum of 

 $50,000 to the Massachusetts Agricultural College for the erec- 

 tion of buildings and the improvement of the same ; and they 

 also repealed a section of a former act which allows each agri- 

 cultural society, under certain restrictions, to send a delegate to 

 the State Board of Agriculture. 



This is all the aid, direct and indirect, that the farming in- 

 terest of Massachusetts received from the legislature of 1869. 



" What, one pennyworth of bread only to all this sack ! " 



The direct expenditure in behalf of agriculture, |1,400 ! 

 while 17,000, in addition to $8,000 heretofore appropriated, was 

 in the same year appropriated for the purpose of re-publishing 

 the " History of the Invertebrate Animals of Massachusetts," 

 which being interpreted is the history of animals lacking back- 

 bone. I by no means wish to urge that this expenditure was 

 unnecessary, partly because, although that kind of animal is not 

 confined to Massachusetts, yet as it is supposed that the politi- 

 cians are generally included in that class, so therefore the re- 

 publication of such history might have become a sort of State 

 necessity. Still, I think the farmers may well compare the ex- 

 penditure authorized in one case with that appropriated for the 

 other. 



While we have but three Acts, in fact, touching agriculture in. 



