REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 25 



grades assigned to wheat by such inspectors were considered, thus 

 greatly broadening the scope of the Department's grain-grading 

 activities. Under Government control the price of wheat depends 

 entirely upon its grade, and this fact stimulated appeals for the 

 determination of the true grade. During the period covered by 

 this report approximately 1,250 appeals were taken. This is an 

 increase of more than 100 per cent over the number in the preceding 

 year. Under cooperative arrangements with the Food Administra- 

 tion the services of the grain supervisors of the Department were 

 made available to the United States Grain Corporation in matters 

 pertaining to the grading of grain under its jurisdiction. Grade 

 determinations made in this way extended into the thousands. 

 Wheat moving to large terminal markets w^as inspected and graded 

 by inspectors licensed by the Department under the grain standards 

 act, and the responsibility of the Department, therefore, with respect 

 to the efficiency of the work of licensed inspectors was greatly en- 

 hanced. The records of the Department show that considerable prog- 

 ress was made in this direction, and the methods of supervising the 

 work of licensed inspectors recently adopted should secure further 

 improvement. The demand for the official inspection of grain is 

 steadily increasing. There are now 330 licensed inspectors and 120 

 inspection points, and within the fiscal year 438,703 cars of corn and 

 337,344 cars of wheat were graded under the act. 



DISTRIBUTION OF LOW-GRADE COTTON. 



It has been very difficult to obtain correct commercial differences 

 for cotton during the past season owing to the great demand "for the 

 high grades and the falling off of that for the low grades. To 

 add to the difficulty, the latter become concentrated at a limited 

 number of designated spot markets. These markets endeavored to 

 submit correct quotations for them, while other markets were at a 

 loss as to how to arrive at correct differences. This caused some mar- 

 kets to quote the very low grades at a much wider discount than 

 others. The apparent result was that the average differences for 

 these grades were comparatively so narrow as to make their delivery 

 on future contracts very profitable. A further result was that the 

 parity between spot cotton and future cotton wag greatly disturbed, 

 future contracts depreciating in value on account of the compara- 

 tively high prices at which the low-grade product was delivered on 

 them. 



97335°— AGR 191S 3 



