THE FIFTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT 



SECRETARY 



State Boaed of Agricultuee, 



To the Senate and House of Bepresentatives of the Commojiwealih of 



Massachusetts. 



In presenting my annual report for the year 1906 it would 

 seem not to be out of place to call attention to the remark- 

 able increase in agricultural activity and prosperity, as set 

 forth in the estimates of tlie Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 

 based on the figures obtained for the State census of 1905. 

 In Bulletin No. 13, issued Oct. 24, 1906, Chas. F. Pidgin, 

 Chief of the Bureau, estimates the value of agricultural 

 products in Massachusetts for 1905 to be $64,000,000. The 

 value of agricultural products ten years earlier, as shown by 

 the census of 1895, was $52,880,431, showing an increase in 

 the last ten years of over 20 per cent. The figures for 1885 

 were $47,756,033, and a comparison with those for 1895 

 shows an increase in that decade of 10.73 per cent, or half 

 that of the decade just closed. Tliese figures speak volumes 

 for the gain in material prosperity on the farms of Massa- 

 chusetts, for the advance in methods and the improvement 

 in business detail attained during the last few years. They 

 show that the farmers of the Commonwealth are not standing- 

 still, content with the methods of their fathers, but that, as 

 a class, they are alert and progressive, keeping abreast of 

 the times, specializing as the demands of an ever-varying 

 market call for specialization, introducing new methods in 

 place of those which have served their day, and taking their 



