TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 29 



to the supply and demand. Though it may sometimes seem that the 

 law has been abrogated, yet prices today, as they always have been, are 

 controlled by the inexorable law of supply and demand. If the supply 

 exceeds the demand, the price will certainly rule low; on the other hand, 

 if there is a deficiency in the supply, the price will rule high. And it 

 should be borne in mind that a fictitious oversupply or a fictitious defi- 

 ciency influences prices precisely as does real oversupply or deficiency. 

 He who offers to sell fifty millions of wheat for future delivery, though he 

 does not expect, or any one else expect, that he will ever actually deliver a 

 bushel, is nevertheless as potent a factor in breaking the market as the 

 legitimate merchant who offers fifty millions of the real stuff. 



All enlightened nations of the earth are today trying to determine the 

 amount of bread crops available. And year by year the expenditure in 

 this direction is greater and greater. England, France, Germany, and Aus- 

 tria-Hungary of the European world, have for years furnished more or less 

 accurate statistics. And even Russia has, since 1865, been developing a 

 crop reporting system. This country's present system was first put into 

 practice in 1883. It is under official control, having been authorized by 

 the emperor himself. A brief account of the Russian system may be 

 found in the September report of the U. S. department of agriculture. 

 The subject of accurate statistics of bread food is considered so vitally 

 important in Europe that for many years representatives of the several 

 wheat-growing countries have annually met in the Austrian capital, in 

 what is popularly known as the Vienna congress, and after carefully sur- 

 veying the whole wheat-growing world have prepared and published an 

 estimate of the world's wheat crop of the current year. 



The system of our own United States department of agriculture is too well 

 understood to require special description. It is a huge machine, yet Mr. 

 Dodge seems to have it well in hand. It has in late years been greatly 

 improved, and the work being done by the statistical division of the 

 department of agriculture is of incalculable value to the producers and 

 consumers — it is of no value to the speculator. It is only three or four 

 years since, in the national convention of the boards of trade, a resolution 

 was introduced, recommending that the department be abolished. I have 

 no sympathy, hardly patience, with the claim so often made that the 

 national crop statistics are compiled in the interest and for the benefit of 

 boards of trade. The truth is, and a candid and impartial investiga- 

 tion will show, that the statistician at Washington fearlessly publishes 

 what the returns show to be facts, regardless of consequences. If the 

 wheat crop is immense, as it is this year, the truth is not withheld even if 

 the price should go lower than the producer thinks; while if the crop be 

 small the dealer is not spared. 



But I would not have you think that I regard the national crop report- 

 ing system as perfect, or even the best that could be devised at the present 

 time. I shall expect it to be much improved in the near future. 



Besides the reports issued under national authority, several of the states 

 have for a number of years published, more or less frequently, state crop 

 reports. These have been prepared under a system in many respects 

 similar and in other respects very unlike the national system. The points 

 of similarity are that the condition of crops when still growing, and of 

 livestock, is reported in percentages of a full crop or a full average; the 

 points of difference are that many of the state reports are corrected each 

 year by an actual farm-to-farm canvasser, while the national reports are so 



