REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 



Siu : I have the honor to submit my seventeenth annual report a'^ 

 Statistician, it being the twenty-feoond annual report of the operations 

 of this branch of the Department service. 



Year by year this work is more extensive and more inHiiential, and 

 more useful as a guide to the farmer in distribution of croj) areas and 

 in the marketing of his products. The organized agencies in the in- 

 terest of speculation, the influences adverse to honest trade, are appar- 

 ently more and more persistent and reckless each season, rendering 

 necessary an official presentation of the facts of production in a spirit 

 of impartial fairness, that can neither be moved by fear nor biased by 

 favor or the hope of private gain. 



The estimates of the Department are bitterly assailed by speculators, 

 by some as too high, by others as too low, while the market can be 

 affected by the criticism; yet at the end of the year both bull and bear 

 accept the figures as substantially correct, quote them, and base their 

 calculations of future supply, visible and invisble, upon them with con- 

 fiding trust. If there are exceptions it is in cases which have been too 

 strenuous and extreme to admit of so sudden oblivion of recent manipu- 

 lations of fact for speculative effect. 



The cotton movement of 1884-'85 has verified the estimates made eight 

 months before the close of the cotton year so closely that the original 

 aggregate is almost identical with the sum of cotton production of the 

 year 1884. The conclusion of the February report, based on the last 

 cotton returns of the season, favored a probable product of 5,067,000 

 bales, which, with the August receipts from the crop of 1885, above 

 similar receipts of the j)revious crop, made a very close approximation 

 to the figures of the cotton movement, much (closer than commercial 

 estimates of the crop, which were at varience with truth a quarter of a 

 million bales or more. 



The crop reporting work has been j)rompt and efficient, and the thanks 

 of the Department and of the country are due to the careful and pains- 

 taking labors of correspondents, who seek no emoluments of office and 

 desire only the public good and the advancement of agriculture. They 

 continue year after year in the study of local crop distribution, rate of 

 production, and changes in crops and methods, acquiring skill with ex- 

 perience and perfecting their judgment of local conditions, content 

 with the fact that they are serving their class and their country, and 

 advancing popular education in statistics. 



j\Iuch progress has been made during the year in the knowledge of 

 (. urrcnt European statistics of agriculture. Tije foreign work, under the 

 direction of Mr. Edmund J. Moffat, the agent in charge, who isalsodeputy 

 consul-general at London, has been i^rogressing satisfactorily, and the 

 object aimed at, an early knowledge of the production and commercial 

 distribution of those products most affected by American competition, 

 has been measurably attained. There are great difliculsies, however, in 



(34£,) 



