REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. LXXIII 



years of an intercensal period, the efforts of the Statistician have been 

 mainly directed to strengthening- and otherwise improving the Depart- 

 ment's several crop-reporting agencies. The most important step that 

 has been taken to this end has been the appointment of two statistical 

 field agents, who are devoting their entire time to a progressive and S3's- 

 tematic visitation of the principal centers of the agricultural industry. 



While the Statistician makes the gratif \' ing statement that the reports 

 received from the Department's regular correspondents were never 

 before so numerous, so complete, so regular, or so prompt, he attributes 

 that greater accuracy of his reports, which has been so ungrudgingly 

 acknowledged by the commercial press of the country, largely to the 

 work of these traveling agents, who have not only made personal 

 investig-ations from time to time, but have brought the Statistician 

 into closer touch with the State statistical agents and other principal 

 correspondents. 



That broadening of the scope of the statistical work of the Depart- 

 ment which will immediately follow the publication of the census 

 reports will involve an increased expenditure, either in the pa3^ment 

 of some small sum to correspondents, who can not reasonaljly be called 

 upon to do more than they are now doing without compensation, or 

 in an increase to the clerical force of the Division, rendered necessary 

 by an increase in the number of correspondents and a redistribution 

 among them of the different classes of products reported upon. 



Great efforts have also been made to add to the completeness and relia- 

 Ijilit}^ of the statistics of foreign crops. Arrangements have been made 

 with the Hungarian Minister of Agriculture for an exchange of sum- 

 marized crop reports by cable; a similar arrangement is in course of 

 negotiation with the Government of Germany, and it is expected that 

 all the principal grain-producing countries of the world will become 

 parties to like arrangements before the crop season of 1901 is far 

 advanced. 



The Statistician urges that advantage should be taken of the recent 

 farm-to-farm visitation in Hawaii and Porto Rico, and the collection 

 of certain agricultural statistics, to extend to those islands the regular 

 statistical work of this Department, such a statistical basis as is fur- 

 nished ])y the census being indispensable to any proper s3"stem of 

 crop reporting. 



SEED DIVISION. 



It appears from the report of the Assistant Secretar}' on the pur- 

 chase and distribution of seeds, that of the total appropriation for this 

 purpose of $130,000 there has been expended during the fiscal year 

 $127,65-±, of which $24,293.73 was for salaries of employees engaged 

 in seed distribution and $20,000 was devoted as provided by Congress 

 for the purchase of rare and valuable foreign seeds and plants dis- 



