198 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



we in Washington are glad to see that you are doing so much 

 for yourselves, and would be glad to see you do more. We would 

 be glad to see your Legislature make an appropriation of eight 

 or ten thousand dollars a year, that we would, out of our funds 

 derived from Congress, be glad to put in an equal amount and, by 

 doubling our forces, maintain a constant service in the State of 

 Missouri, so that the classification and survey of the State can be 

 finished in eight or ten years; and that is what we would like to 

 see done because we are interested in it from a national stand- 

 point as well as from the standpoint of the State of Missouri. 



DISCUSSION. 



Q. When you speak of Secretary Wilson's report showing 

 that the value of farm crops advanced from $3,000,000,000 to 

 $8,000,000,000, do you mean that the farm crops alone advanced 

 that much, or do you mean live stock and other things? 



A. It means both — the total value of live stock and farm 

 crops. 



Q. I would like to ask whether the yield per acre has very 

 materially increased in the last twelve years. 



A. The records show that for the past forty years, if you 

 divide the period into four periods of ten years each, that the first 

 decade and the last decade have been rather high, have given 

 rather high yields, and the two intermediate have been rather 

 low, so that there is apparently a falling off and then a rise for 

 the past thirty years ; but as a matter of fact, in statistics of this 

 kind, forty years is too short a time to eliminate seasonal differ- 

 ences. For example, in the past ten years California has seen 

 two of the lowest crops on record, and the last year of the period 

 they got the third highest yield on record. Now, when the differ- 

 ence between the minimum and maximum yield in a ten-year period 

 is greater than the average for the whole period, the average does 

 not mean much; but so far as we can say safely the indications 

 are that there has been a rise in yield of crops during the past 

 forty years, but it has not been very marked. 



