that of the agriculture of the United States can approximate the truth with frequency and certainty, unless he has some knowledge of the calculus or computation of probabilities. Enough has been stated to show that no person can become a successful statistician, an assistant statistician, the chief of a section in the Division of Statistics, or even a thoroughly competent clerk in that division, who is not well posted in the literature of European and American statistics. It is quite plain also that each person engaged in making up statistics for American use, from foreign tabulations, should be perfectly acquainted with the metric system of weights and measures. In that system all foreign statistics, except those of Great Britain, are computed. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS. There is no line of investigation which requires more intellectual discipline, more accuracy of judgment, more patience in research, more skill in combining and correlating facts and figures, or more special training for its pursuit, than the line followed by the painstaking and successful statistician. Holding such opinions, the Secretary of Agriculture is convinced that every person employed in gathering statistics under the chief of that division should be admitted to that work only after a thorough, exhaustive, and successful examination at the hands of the U. S. Civil Service Commission. Therefore, he has called for such examinations, by that honorable body, of candidates for the positions of assistant statistician and for chiefs of sections in the Division of Statistics. When these examinations transpire, any employés now in that division of the Department of Agriculture are at liberty, with other competitors, to test their peculiar fitness and adaptation for that work by submitting to the examination. It is quite certain that their long experience with the facts and figures that are received from day to day in that division will be no disad vantage to them in the contest with outsiders, who have had no such contact. STATE AND COUNTY AGENTS. A fundamental objection to the present system of gathering agricultural statistics in the United States is the fact that correspondents, who are expected to furnish reliable data, are paid nothing for their work. The Government is endeavoring to get something for nothing. The only payments (for services) made to these thousands of correspondents in all the counties of each State and Territory are public documents, garden seeds, and a few postage stamps. The service has been very much better than its compensation. In the several States and counties have been found very many zealous and enthusiastic men anxious to do this work. But they are the exception. Human nature, as a rule, is not desirous of doing diligent duty in any line without remuneration. In addition to the county agents, the Federal Government has a State statistical agent in each State and Territory of the Union. The salaries for these agents range from $400 to $1,200 per annum each. As a rule they are competent and accomplished men, but the service would be vastly improved if all these appointees were placed in the classified service, so that hereafter, when a vacancy occurs, the person appointed to fill it shall have passed an examination before the U.S. Civil Service Commission, demonstrating his fitness and adaptability for the proper discharge of the duties pertaining to the position. WORK OF THE YEAR. The Division of Statistics is, for convenience of administration, divided into four sections, as follows: Compilation and foreign statistics; answers to Congressional inquiries and all verification of agricultural statistics are conducted in this section. Records, files, and correspondence; the title of this section clearly expresses the nature of the duties assigned to it. Crop reporting, which covers all investigations into crop conditions, and collecting and tabulating the reports of correspondents. Freights; the work of this section consists in crosschecking the compilation of crop reports, computations, and freights. The total expenditures in behalf of the Division of Statistics, including salaries of employés, during the last year, were one hundred and ten thousand dollars ($110,000). During 1894 the Division of Statistics has enlarged its work upon the crops of the United States. The data for the final report for 1893, containing estimates as to the area, product, and value of the principal crops, were secured by the issuance of 135,000 interrogative circulars addressed to farmers and others who were selected for their high character and intelligence. Early in 1894 the usual investigation was made as to probable changes in the areas of the principal crops of the Republic, and the results of those inquiries were published in the report for May. The annual inquest as to the quantity of corn and wheat in farmers' hands on the first day of March was thoroughly made, and the facts found were published in the report for March. It contained also a comparison with the corresponding data for a number of previous years and a review of the production and distribution of the several cereals for a term of years. Since then a carefully prepared review of the "supply and distribution of wheat for twenty-five years" was given to the public. A tabulated statement showing the wholesale prices of a number of principal agricultural products at leading cities in all sections of the United States was also presented in the report of the Statistician for March, 1894. Careful inquiry has been made as to the cost per bushel of producing wheat and corn. Replies from thirty thousand (30,000) farmers and four thousand (4,000) experts were received. Their findings were AGR 94 -5 published by States and by sections. The State findings were those of experts, and the findings as to particular sections were by leading farmers. Two other inquiries made by the Division of Statistics were of great interest. The first related to the average weight of wool fleeces in the United States, and the second was relative to the health of the people in the several States and Territories, and was issued for the purpose of ascertaining the diseases most prevalent in each. The annual table of the world's wheat crop published by this division consists in part of official figures, and in part of such unofficial estimates as are deemed worthy of confidence. This table has been gradually increasing in correctness and accuracy. Its composition is a work of great care and diligent research, involving examination of reports in many languages. In addition to these customary reports and publications, much time was spent in the preparation of special reports on a variety of subjects of interest to farmers and business men, which, as usual, found a place from time to time in the monthly reports. AN ANNUAL AGRICULTURAL CENSUS. Is it not probable that satisfactory statistics of the agriculture of the United States could be better obtained through State authorities? Each Commonwealth, in its labor bureau, or in some other of the executive branches of its government, could establish a properly paid bureau of statistics, and through county agents gather reliable data quickly. The statistics thus collected would be sent by the commissioners in charge of statistics at the several State capitals directly to the Agricultural Department. In that manner possibly a more thorough, reliable, and credible collection of agricultural statistics might be made. If the tables are worth making at all, they are worth making correctly and credibly. If, however, the present system is to be continued, advantages would result from an annual census of agricultural acreages and crops. It is needed as à basis for even approximate accuracy in estimating crop conditions. To give the average condition of any crop in any State certain average weights are applied to each county estimate. Such weights should of course be based on the acreage of each crop in each county. As a fact, they are obtained apparently from acreages reported by preceding United States census, regardless of the increase or decrease from year to year in each county of the area devoted to the several crops. This fundamental fallacy seems to have permeated the agricultural statistics for many years, and it is clear that there must be only guarded and limited faith in the possible accuracy of the crop estimates of the Division of Statistics up to a very recent period of time. Effectual elimination of all possibility of such erroneous calcu lations is only feasible by means of such an annual census of acreages, which might be taken by some of the experienced men who now report to the Department, provided they are paid for the work. The precise information desirable by the taking of this census is as follows: (1) The area under each of the more important crops. (2) The aggregate product of each of such crops. (3) The quantity of wheat and corn in the hands of farmers at a date after the spring sowings and plantings and before the beginning of harvest; and also the quantity of cotton and tobacco remaining in the hands of planters, either at the same date or at some other designated time. (4) The number of farm animals on the 1st of January of each year. Such a census, to be carefully made by practical men, experienced in agriculture, who may be selected out of the large number of competent persons who have been doing gratuitous work in this line for many years, is very much favored by Mr. Henry A. Robinson, the efficient chief of the Division of Statistics. He estimates that the actual cost of collecting for the census certain agricultural statistics, which may be considered about equivalent as regards the labor of collection to those just proposed, would be not far from five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000), and desires that an appropriation of that sum for the work of collecting such statistics during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1896, be made. In Great Britain the agricultural statistics are as nearly correct as possible, because each farm is accounted for as to the amount of acreage in each crop and as to the number of domestic animals of each species. Furthermore, the yield of each sown or planted crop, per acre, is given, together with the number of poultry, eggs, and pounds of butter produced-all of which is signed by either the tenant farmer or the proprietor. This exactness is reached through the revenue systems of foreign countries. It might possibly be approximated in the various counties and States of the American Union through similar agencies, or by United States revenue collectors and their deputies. THE GRATUITOUS PROMISCUOUS DISTRIBUTION OF SEED. The Secretary of Agriculture calls attention to the report of this Department for the year 1893, and particularly to page 17 thereof, under the head of "Distribution of seed at the public expense." Briefly, he recommends that the purchase of seeds for gratuitous and promiscuous distribution be utterly abolished, and that not one cent be appropriated for such distribution. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1894, the Seed Division gave out to Senators, Representatives, and Delegates in Congress seven million four hundred and forty thousand nine hundred and eighteen (7,440,918) papers of vegetable seeds, six hundred and forty thousand and sixty-five (640,065) papers of flower seeds, sixty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-six (63,746) papers of tobacco seed, one hundred and eighty-two thousand five hundred and forty-two (182,542) papers of turnip seed, thirty-five (35) quarts of mangel-wurzel seed, five hundred and twenty-one (521) quarts of sugar-beet seed, four thousand eight hundred and seventy-three (4,873) quarts of rape seed, fifty (50) quarts of oats, twenty-five (25) quarts of sorghum, eleven thousand seven hundred and six (11,706) quarts of corn, ten thousand one hundred and sixty-six (10,166) quarts of grass seed, nine thousand two hundred and ninety-three (9,293) quarts of clover seed, and twentyone thousand one hundred and sixty-six (21,166) quarts of cotton seed. In that distribution there were one hundred and seventy-seven (177) varieties of vegetable seed, sixty-five (65) of flower seed, seven (7) of tobacco, one (1) of wheat, five (5) of corn, three (3) of oats, one (1) of barley, five (5) of grass, four (4) of clover, six (6) of sorghum, one (1) of Kaffir corn, one (1) of Jerusalem corn, two (2) of millo maize, two (2) of soja beans, one (1) of cowpeas, one (1) of flat peas, one (1) of serradella, one (1) of spurry, one (1) of hairy vetch, one (1) of rape, eight (8) of turnips, three (3) of sugar beets, one (1) of mangel-wurzel, one (1) of peanuts, and ten (10) varieties of cotton. In the distribution, Senators, Representatives, and Delegates in Congress sent out eight million three hundred and eighty-five thousand one hundred and twenty (8,385,120) packages; county statistical correspondents of the Agricultural Department, five hundred and seven thousand six hundred and sixty-one (507,661); State statistical agents of the Department, one hundred and forty-one thousand one hundred and twenty-nine (141,129); experiment stations and experimental farms, fifty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight (52,228); agricultural associations and miscellaneous applicants, four hundred and sixty-nine thousand one hundred and eighty (469,180). So that the aggregate number of packages of seed gratuitously distributed by the Government of the United States in the fiscal year is nine million five hundred and fifty-five thousand three hundred and eighteen (9,555,318). The cost of this enormous distribution, not including the carriage of the packages (which amount in weight to more than three hundred tons), as dead matter by the postal service, is as follows: For the purchase and distribution of seeds....... Making a total of........ That total is divided as follows: Paid out for seed........... $111, 242.51 12,400.00 123, 642.51 $56, 968.66 2,858.97 182.08 3, 010. 59 Paid out for freight and express charges. Paid out for grain bags Paid out for salary and expenses of special agent.. Cost of seed delivered at Department 63, 020.30 |