34 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



We of agriculture have a lesson to learn from all this. The 

 peojile of the far west have commenced to learn it, and we 

 of the middle west and you of the east will do well to begin 

 to sit up and take lessons. If we do not, it will be the worse 

 for us and for the interests we represent. All over the west 

 there is the most thoroughly organized attempt to boom the 

 country, and it is backed by apparently unlimited means. 

 I asked why it is done, and the answer invariably was, 

 " We want more people here, so as to develop the country 

 and increase both its producing and its buying power." The 

 people of the Pacific slope understand that their present 

 population is not enough for the highest economic efficiency, 

 and to bring more people there is not only to afford an oppor- 

 tunity for them, but it is also to increase the profits of those 

 already there. Hence the Alaska- Yukon Exposition; hence 

 the acres of literature published; hence the attractive views; 

 hence many things that we of the east may well copy. If one- 

 tenth the attempt had ever been made to develop New Eng- 

 land agriculturally that has been made to develop it in manu- 

 factures, or that is being made to develop the agriculture 

 of the far west, it would now blossom as the rose, abandoned 

 farms and all. 



There is an undeveloped agriculture of the east. There 

 are some things that can be done in close proximity to popu- 

 lation centers more advantageously than elsewhere; and 

 whenever the older portions of the country undertake their 

 agricultural development in an organized way, they and 

 everybody will be astonished at the results. I commend to 

 your attention, therefore, the development of the agricultural 

 interests of the east by the employment of modern business 

 methods through organized effort. 



The Cjiaiuaiax. Perhaps President Butterfield of our 

 Agricultural College will say a word on this line. 



President K. L. Pur rKKFiKLD. It seems to me that Dean 

 Daven])ort has struck a l)low which should come home to us 

 here in New England with s])(H'ial force. I have been won- 

 dering, while he was talking, why we cannot here in Massa- 

 chusetts begin to act immediately on these suggestions. It 



