REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 



Sir: I have the honor to submit my eighteenth annual report as 

 Statistician, the first reporting the ojjerations of the Division of 

 Statistics for 1865 — the series running to 1878, inclusive, and from 

 1881 to the present time. 



The past year has been one of progress in the direction of com- 

 prehensiveness and thoroughness in statistical work. The need of 

 accuracy and reliability in original data is more and more accepted 

 as a necessity, and the completeness in statistical exposition is more 

 generally acknowledged. The overwhelming volume of transpiring 

 facts, accumulating daily, and the haste and necessary superficiality 

 of their treatment by the publicists of the time, suggest the desira- 

 bility of closer analj^sis and more accurate deduction in statistical 

 work. There is possibly an ampler opportunity and better facilities 

 for progress in this direction, under official auspices, than under the 

 limitation of personal effort and private means. An especial respon- 

 sibility, therefore, attaches to Government statisticians, and requires 

 at their hands the largest and best attainable results. They are, 

 however, subject to the limitation, due to the imperfections, not to 

 say abuses, which inhere more or loss in all civil-service systems. 

 There is probably a higher degree of impartiality in official statis- 

 tical work than in private investigation, which is so apt to be under- 

 taken for a specific object, to support some hypothesis for personal 

 or corporate ^ain, or in attempted establishment of a foregone con- 

 clusion. It IS true that official work may be tinged with parti- 

 sanship or warped by personal prejudice, though the tendency of 

 scientific co-ordination of living facts, which bear upon human des- 

 tiny and progress, is towards the truth, in all its clearness and depth, 

 unbiased by extraneous and comparatively unimportant considera- 

 tions. 



The agricultural statistics of this country represent an annually 

 increasing volume of jDroduction and a constantly widening variety 

 of product, rendering the collection of current data difficult and labo- 

 rious. The difference in rapidity of settlement and agricultural de- 

 velopment of the several States and Territories also complicates the 

 question of comparative areas and products. 



The corps of county reporters is larger than at any former time, 

 including one chief correspondent and several assistants for each of 

 2,258 counties, comprising all but an insignificant portion of the pro- 

 ductive territory of the United States. The State agents have also a 

 separate staff of local assistants, making reports parallel with those 

 of the correspondents rej^orting direct to the Department, and local 

 investigations as required. 



The vv'ork of Mr. Edmund J. Moffat has been continued at London, 

 with the aid of consuls at continental commercial centers, with dis- 

 cretion, energy, and efficiency. Monthly reports have been made in 

 season for publication simultaneously with domestic crop statistics, 



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