128 N. J. Mosquito Extermination Association 



been allowed to go to rack and ruin ; weeds are everywhere ; and in a 

 great many cases we find deserted farms, old houses rotting down 

 and fields being naturally reforested. There are a few exceptions to 

 this general rule. 



Where we have put in new roadways, where the automobile 

 traffic is large, where everything that is raised is sold rapidly, there 

 we find better improvements. I found along the shores of Barnegat 

 Bay, in the midst of second or third growth scrub so high that you 

 can scarcely see the buildings, a large old house with two immense 

 chimneys, a house large enough to take care of a family of twelve or 

 fourteen people. This house was rotting down. On inquiry about 

 that house the people say, "The time was in the memory of our 

 people here when in place of all that forest you see there were 

 cultivated fields and farms." "Why this change?" "After the Civil 

 War industrial opportunities arose in our neighboring cities. Our 

 boys went to the cities, the people grew old and they either stayed 

 with the farm until they died or they moved to the villages." Why 

 has no one come to replace those people ? As the land went down in 

 price why didn't the men come from the high-priced land to the 

 low-priced land? I have reached the conclusion that the reason 

 they have not come is found in the mosquito pest. The man who 

 lives in the Middle West will not sell his high-priced land, go into 

 southern Jersey and buy low-priced land and develop it, bringing his 

 capital and his labor with him, largely because of the mosquito. We 

 receive many letters every year at the Experiment Station inquir- 

 ing about the cheap farm lands of New Jersey ; and almost in- 

 variably these letters carry with them an inquiry as to the mosquito 

 conditions. 



We cannot reclaim hundreds of thousands of acres of woodland 

 or thousands of acres of marsh-land as long as we do not have the 

 labor to take care of it. If we can get rid of this mosquito pest on 

 which we are working, the normal flow of capital and labor of an 

 agricultural nature will take place and we will find an abundance of 

 population coming into this state, and bringing with it capital and 

 labor to cut off the woodland, and to take care of the salt marshes. 

 The primary problem is to rid the state of the salt-marsh mosquito 

 and thus open the way for free movement of agricultural capital and 

 labor upon our fertile but low-priced lands. 



There have been a great many reclamation projects in the West 

 where thousands and hundred of thousands of dollars have been 



