470 



condition, and declare that tbe Department of Agriculture makes the 

 monthly predictions thus dishonestly concocted by themselves. 



Some go still farther in their dishonesty. After making such fiilse 

 <leductions in a giveu year, they continue the next their tabulations of 

 product in bales from current reports of condition of the immature croj), 

 and, instead of taking percentages of the last year's crop, they make 

 their comparison, when it suits their purposes, with their own fabrica- 

 tions impute<l to the Department as actual estimates. And, worse still, 

 they make their calculations, either from malice or ignorance, by false 

 percentages. For example : if in a given State, the reported area is 20 

 ])er cent, less, and condition upon that area 10 less, they make the loss 

 30 per cent., when 10 per cent, reduction from 80 per cent, of present 

 area makes the actual loss 20+8, or 28 per cent. Should there be 50 

 per cent, reduction upon an ariea 50 per cent, of that of the previous year, 

 the proper expression (except that there is no propriety in writing 

 iimount of yield when only condition of growing i^lant is meant) would 

 be 25, or a loss of 75 per cent., instead of which these sapient mathema- 

 ticians add the two fifties, and write the loss 100 per cent. Should the 

 reduction of area be 00 per cent., and that of condition 50, of course 

 these wise calculators would make a reduction of 110 per cent , and 

 charge the 10 per cent, below zero to " the Bureau." 



Kecent tables, thus made in defiance of truth, honor, and mathematics, 

 have misrepresented by nearly half a million bales the real indications 

 of the Department's monthly history of condition. It is not expected 

 that speculators should deal fairly or honestly, and their course is of no 

 sort of consequence, except that honest men may be misled by their 

 blatant falsehoods in a matter of some importance. 



There is one point that should be better understood. The statistician 

 does not evolve cotton-estimates from his inner consciousness, nor make 

 guesses from a small number of data, but simply gives a fair expression 

 of the returns made by planters, (not Government officials, as has been 

 falsely charged,) oidy correcting obvious errors and eliminating unre- 

 liable material. As to the history of the growing crop, with its vicissi- 

 tudes and changes, as recorded in reports of condition from June to 

 October, there has never been a method approaching it in fullness and 

 accuracy ; and no cotton-merchants nor sidewalk-planters can possibly 

 equal it. As to ultimate estimates of yield, the interests of producers 

 are a conservative force tending to low estimates, and if their aggregate 

 is slightly too low it must be given, and not the arbitrary dictum of th^ 

 statistician. At the same time, correspondents are urged to deliberate 

 and accurate judgment; and whenever a bias is shown, or strongly sus- 

 pected, such figures are slightly modified or discarded in sheer justice 

 to the more reliable majority. Further than this the statistician is not 

 at liberty to go, and there his responsibility ceases. Thus is the planter's 

 estimate made up but once, annually, at the close of the season, not 

 monthly from the date of planting; and whether it is as high as con- 

 sumers would like or not, it is the fairly- written estimate of the pro- 

 ducers, and is taken by intelligent men as such. 



If such bias exists, it is generally less than in other local reports ; those 

 of the cotton-exchanges usually representing lower cotton-prospects than 

 Department returns, though the exchange reports are more indefinite in 

 their modes of expression. For instance, there may be thirty reports 

 of growing cotton in Tennessee, twenty indicating decrease, ten increase 

 of yield; but those counties might possibly be the ten which have here- 

 tot'ore produced four-fifths of the crop of a State which now includes 

 ninety-three counties. 



