176 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



the south, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois in the west, and 

 California on the Pacific slope, — in fact, all sections of the 

 country exhibit rural counties whose population has de- 

 clined. 



The dazzle of the city has been as glittering and magnetic 

 to the boy of the west, of the south and of the Pacific slope 

 as to the boy of the middle States and New England. 

 Counties like Andrew and other counties that I am familiar 

 with in north Missouri, unsurpassed in agricultural capaci- 

 ties b}^ any section of America, show a failing oif in pop- 

 ulation. 



In the inter-mountain region, where at the touch of the 

 waters of irrigation a luxuriance of crops springs to life un- 

 known to the Mississippi valley, far-off Utah, a thousand miles 

 from other civilizations and their markets, has its counties 

 which have reached their flood tide of population and are 

 ebljing. Two miles from the town of Logan in this scorned 

 territory land is higher than it probably is within two miles 

 of this old mart of international commerce and of local trade 

 in which this Board is now in session. Even in Kansas and 

 Nebraska, hardly yet in their childhood, speculation has 

 reached its opportunities and turned its back upon many 

 counties of these lands of milk and honey. 



A boy in Illinois who desires a farm must pay one hun- 

 dred dollars an acre for a good quarter-section, or sixteen 

 thousand dollars ; and not less than twenty thousand dollars 

 will man for action one of these quarter-sections. Farms in 

 central Iowa command fifty dollars an acre, and if any sell 

 for less it is because public judgment holds them of inferior 

 value, so that not less than twelve thousand dollars would 

 be required to capitalize them. Where more than one son 

 is born on a farm in Iowa, it has to be divided, or the land- 

 less son faces a harder road to land ownership than his 

 cousin in New England. , 



Clearly the time is coming in the history of New England 

 agriculture when courage should be joined to capital and 

 machinery in fitting its old farms to enter bravely into the 

 arena of competition with the rest of the world. To these 

 New England farms, in the belief of the speaker, should be 

 applied more tillage, for the following reasons : because, in 



