284 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



and in handling correspondence and other necessary office work, so 

 as to relieve the field agents of the burden of routine details and 

 leave them free to devote their entire time to the more important and 

 difficult work of studying, analyzing, estimating, and forecasting 

 crop conditions and prospects. 



The purchase of at least 30 automobiles would be especially desir- 

 able. Crop estimates can not be made entirely from written reports 

 of correspondents, nor can the field agent judge of the condition and 

 probable yield of a crop from the fleeting glance he gets through a 

 car window when speeding across the country between cities and 

 towns. During the growing season, especially at critical periods in 

 the life history of a crop, field agents must get out in the fields and 

 examine individual plants. The greater the number of fields ex- 

 amined the more accurate will be the field agent's judgment of the 

 extent of damage from various causes. At the present time field 

 agents travel from town to town by rail or trolley and at each point 

 it is usually necessary to hire a conve}^ance to go out in the country. 

 Trains run at irregular intervals and it is often difficult to obtain a 

 conveyance at stopping points. The agent can inspect only a small 

 territory in the vicinity of a town and often loses much time waiting 

 for trains. The use of automobiles by agents would obviate many of 

 these difficulties and by enabling the field agent to visit crop-pro- 

 ducing areas not readily accessible by railway, with power to stop at 

 any point en route to examine particular fields, would increase the 

 efficiency and dependability of the service manyfold. 



It is highly desirable also that the clerical force in Washington 

 should be increased in order to handle properly the increased number 

 of returns from the field force and to meet the increasing demands 

 which are constantly being made upon the bureau for special investi- 

 gations. Irrespective of whether the field force is increased, the 

 desirability of a substantial increase in the clerical force of the 

 bureau is becoming more and more apparent. During the past dec- 

 ade the volume of work to be done has nearly doubled and is likely 

 to increase as the agriculture of the country develops and as interest 

 grows in the production and consumption of agricultural products. 

 The fact that the crop-reporting service has been able to meet the 

 increasing demands upon it with its present inadequate force is due 

 largely to the cooperation of public-spirited men in every community 

 who serve as voluntary crop reporters without monetary compensa- 

 tion, and to the lo} 7 al and efficient service of employees in the field 

 and in the Washington office, who cheerfully work outside of the 

 customary office hours and on Sundays and legal holidays when 

 necessary to tabulate returns in order to get the crop reports out 

 promptly. 



