REPORT OP THE SECRETARY. 193 



monthly; the meetings were held in the office of the chief of the 

 bureau, which was kept locked during sessions, no one being allowed 

 to enter or to leave the room or the bureau, and all telephones being 

 disconnected. 



The procedure at the meetings of the board is now substantially as 

 it was in the beginning. "When the board has assembled, reports and 

 telegrams regarding speculative crops from State and field agents, 

 which had been placed unopened in a safe in the office of the Secre- 

 tary of Agriculture, are delivered by the Secretary, opened and 

 tabulated, and the reports by States from the several classes of agents 

 and correspondents relating to all crops dealt with are brought 

 together in convenient parallel columns on final tabulation slips. 



The board is thus provided with several separate estimates, cover- 

 ing each State and each separate crop, made independently by the 

 respective classes of correspondents and agents of the bureau, each 

 reporting for the territory or geographic unit with which he is 

 thoroughly familiar. Abstracts of the weather conditions in relation 

 to the different crops by States are also prepared from the weekly 

 bulletins of the Weather Bureau. 



With all these data before the board, each individual member com- 

 putes independently on a separate slip or final computation slip his 

 own estimate of the crop condition or yield of each crop or of the 

 number, condition, etc., of farm animals for each State separately. 

 These results are then compared and discussed by the board under the 

 supervision of the chairman, and the final figures for each State are 

 decided upon. 



It has been interesting to note how often the reports of the different 

 classes of correspondents and agents are very nearh'' identical and 

 how closely the figures arrived at independently by the individual 

 members of the board agree. The estimate by States, as finally 

 determined by the board, is weighted by the acreage figures for the 

 respective States, so that the result for the United States is a true 

 weighted average for each subject. 



The present method of making the crop report by a board under 

 the circumstances that surround and confine this board is undoubt- 

 edly proof against any premature use of the crop report and has 

 deservedly won the confidence of the public. 



In order that information contained in the crop reports may be 

 made available simultaneously throughout the entire United States, 

 they are handed at an announced hour on report days to all appli- 

 cants and to the Western Union Telegraph Co. and the Postal Tele- 

 graph-Cable Co., which have branch offices in the Department of 

 Agriculture, for transmission to the exchanges and to the press. A 

 multigraph statement, also, containing estimates of condition or of 



70481°— AGR 1912 13 



