Visitors to the Agriculture Building at the Exposition should not overlook the Massachusetts exhibit. For that matter they are scarcely likely to do so for the old Bay state has done herself proud in her characteristic manner. In her space devoted ostensibly to agricultural products she does not exhibit as much as a single blade of grass or a nubbin of corn. While her sister States in their simplicity display potatoes, oats, beets and turnips Massachusetts scientifically throws herself on statistics. It may be that the Bay State cows are fed upon statistical hay; at any rate that is the only kind exhibited there and with it the visitor sees statistical butter churned from statistical milk by statistical dairymen.
There are a few unscientific persons even in Massachusetts who prefer to see a real corncob rather than figures and diagrams showing the acres of corn under cultivation. Two of these simple souls in the form of old ladies from Amherst wandered through the Agriculture Building yesterday. They ejaculated sighs of gratification when they espied the Massachusetts façade. Tell it not in Gath and proclaim it not in Boston; they were actually disgusted when they looked through the pavilion and saw not even the sacred Bean whose barbecue is a religious rite of Saturday nights in the "Athens of America."
In the Georgia section next door they saw over 100 varieties of farm products from one little 25-acre farm. The Massachusetts section had only 100 varieties of charts from the State Agricultural College at Amherst. Connecticut, across the way, had all kinds of farm truck, a great display of hazel nuts, shag-bark walnuts, hickory nuts and a bridge and mill constructed of ears of corn. The Bay State had only 48 pictures of trees, each standing lonely in its own meadow, and taken with leaves and without. As to whether these constitute all the trees in Massachusetts or not her statistics are ominously silent. New Hampshire exhibited rye, corn, maple syrup and boiled cider, among other gross earthly products; her refined neighbors on the south had nine plates showing about 54 pen and ink drawings of microscopic worms, with their scientific nomenclature of nematodes. New Jersey displayed sweet potatoes and New York 300 kinds of Irish "spuds." Massachusetts met these with rows of little phials containing what purports to be analyses of the tobacco soil of Worcester, the onion soil of Sunderland, the burdock soil of Pittsfield and the thistle soil of Natick. It was all very scientific, but somehow not satisfying to the two old ladies from Amherst.
"Is this all the Massachusetts exhibit?" they inquired of a NEWS reporter. They were assured that nothing more was to be found even with a microscope, and they turned away sadly from the red lines and purple lines, and the worm pictures, and the figures, to feast their eyes on real oats and actual corn and bona fide potatoes exhibited by Massachusetts' unscientific neighbors.
The Agricultural Exhibitors' Club of the Pan-American Exposition will give a reception tonight in the Agricultural building from 8 to 10 o'clock. Telegrams of regret have been received from Senator Chauncey M. Depew, and from Gov. Heard of Louisiana on account of previous engagements.
The speakers of the evening willb e I. T. Roberts, dean of Cornell University, F.A. Converse, supt. of agriculture and live stock, Alexandro Bermudez, Commissioner of Nicaragua, President John G. Milburn. The Mexican band will be stationed in the balcony and furnish music for the reception and refreshments in the booth between the Oregon and New York State buildings.