294 DEl'AKTMENTAL RP:PUKTS. 



bility of requiring from the Department's statistical correspondents 

 either more frequent rei^orts or reports covering a larger number of 

 products than those noAA' included in the scliedules. This difficulty 

 will have to be surmounted either by making correspondents some 

 small i^ecuniarj' compensation for their work or by increasing the num- 

 ber of correspondents and having some of them report on the grain 

 crops and others on fruits, vegetables, farm animals and animal prod- 

 ucts, etc., according to the season of the year. From one or the other 

 of these alternatives there seems to be no escape, and either of them 

 will involve an increased expenditure, the former as already indicated, 

 and the latter by so increasing the number of reports to be dealt with 

 in the office as to render it impossible to tabulate them with that 

 promptness wliich is so necessary, if the result is to be of value to the 

 agricultural and commercial interests of the country, without corre- 

 spondingly increasing the clerical force. T therefore earnestly recom- 

 mend that in the Congressional appropriation for the fiscal year 1891-92 

 the amount made available for the work of this Division be increased 

 by the sum of !i'lo,000. 



EFFORTS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE DOMESTIC CROP-REPORTING 



SERVICE. 



In view of the near approach of the time when the reports of the 

 Federal Census will enable the Statistician to broaden the scope of the 

 Department's crop-reporting system b}^ furnishing him with a definite 

 and authoritative starting point for those minor l)ut still important 

 crops which have never yet been embraced within the Department's 

 statistical investigations, great efforts have been made to strengthen 

 and otherwise impi'ove the ^•arious crop-reporting agencies. The 

 number of the Department's statistical correspondents is so large, and 

 the geogi-aphical unit for which each one of them reports is, in nine- 

 teen cases out of twenty, so small, that errors that are those of the 

 individual rather than of the class, and that escape the watchful eyes 

 of the tabulators, have no effect upon the general result. Among 

 correspondents of all classes, however, there is and always has been 

 an apparently irresisti])le tendency to underestimate acreage — a ten- 

 dency that is only partially offset by a disposition to overestimate 

 yield per acre, and which has to be modified by subsequent reports of 

 production and movement or by the results of special investigations. 

 While there is no reason to believe that any Statistician of the Depart- 

 ment has ever found it necessary to make changes that have been 

 purely arbitrary, there has long been a manifest need of an auxiliary 

 agency, whose reports should be absolutel}^ unbiased and independent 

 of every consideration save that of presenting to tlie Statistician, from 

 time to time, an accurate setting forth of actual conditions. 



This the Statistician had in contemplation for more than two years 

 before the condition of the appropriation made its attainment feasible, 

 but on October 1, 1899, it was found practicable to appoint two special 

 field agents, whose entire time should be devoted to a progressive 

 visitation of the principal centers of the agricultural industry, with 

 such special assignments as occasion might require. For these appoint- 

 ments the Statistician was so fortunate as to have available Mr. E. S. 

 Holmes, jr., chief of the crop-reporting section of the Division of 

 Statistics, and Mr. B. C. AVhite, of Tiouisiana, who had charge of the 

 cotton investigation of the Eleventh Census, under the direction of 

 the present Statistician of tliis Department. Tliese gentlemen luive 



