316 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



the crop in other sections of the country will bring the production up 

 to twenty million bushels for the entire country. This wheat has evi- 

 dently passed the experimental stage and is now an established crop in 

 a considerable number of the semiarid States. 



Referring to the propaganda for sugar-beet culture, inaugurated 

 soon after the present Secretary came to the Department, and the 

 widespread tests of its adaptation to different parts of the countiy, 

 this industry is pointed to as one which has become well established in 

 favored localities, whose farming side has been greatly benefited by 

 scientific investigation. In 1897 there were but nine beet-sugar fac- 

 tories in the county, with a combined output of thirty thousand short 

 tons of sugar; the estimated output for 1905 is two hundred and eighty 

 thousand short tons. Similarly, rice culture in the Southern States, 

 especially Louisiana and Texas, has been exploited and encouraged by 

 the introduction of Japanese varieties, and has grown very greatly in 

 extent. 



In addition to the important investigations of the Bureau of Animal 

 Industry on contagious diseases of animals and their means of control, 

 the meat inspection in its charge has steadily increased. Upon this 

 work depends in very large degree a foreign trade worth millionsof 

 dollars yearly to American stock raisers. This year the inspection 

 covered sixty-six million live animals before slaughter, and over forty 

 million carcasses after slaughter, representing an increase in this work 

 of about 33-g- per cent in the past eight } y ears. The inspection work has 

 also been extended to other food products intended for export, and to 

 all foods imported into the United States, for which purpose branch 

 laboratories of the Bureau of Chemistry have been established in the 

 ports of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Fran- 

 cisco, and Chicago. A system of food standards has also been worked 

 out as a basis for guidance in Federal, State, and municipal food 

 inspection. 



And so on throughout the report. Taking up the work of the dif- 

 ferent bureaus and divisions, the Secretary points out the more 

 important lines of development, and enumerates the many lines in 

 which investigations have been prosecuted with practical applica- 

 tion to American agriculture. The showing is indeed a gratifying 

 one. The presentation is clear and direct, and affirms how definite 

 has been the aim in the development of the Department's work along 

 the various lines of activity. No one can read the report without a 

 fuller appreciation of the extent and the ramifications of the Depart- 

 ment, and of the very many ways in which it is serving the farming 

 public and contributing to the general welfare of the country. It is 

 as broad in its sympathies as the relationships of the industry it stands 

 for, and no legitimate interest within its scope will fail to awake a 

 responsive chord when it appeals to the Department for aid. 



