88 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OP AGRICULTURE. 



tem of international crop reports should be inaugurated, and the prompt 

 exchange of current statistics should be secured. It is my desire that 

 this Department especially should be encouraged to participate in an 

 effort in one, and, if possible, in both of these directions. 



It is unfortunate that a higher appreciation of the value of investiga- 

 tion tending to the introduction of new industries into this country, and 

 for the protection of those already established, should not characterize 

 our law-makers. Few of the State legislatures have ever provided a 

 permanent system of statistical inquiry, though more has been accom- 

 plished in ten years in that direction than in the entire prior history of 

 State legislation. In some cases, after successful initiation, ignorant 

 majorities have ruthlessly stricken down a system just beginning to work 

 beneficently. A department of agriculture established in Georgia, the 

 first in the cotton States, at the cost of a few thousand dollars per an- 

 num, haa been the means of saving and producing millions in the inspec- 

 tion, of fertilizers and the stimulation of neglected branches of produc- 

 tion; yet a majority report of a committee of the legislature has recom- 

 mended its abolition, though the minority showed that it was putting 

 into the State treasury far more than its cost in. fees for inspection of 

 fertilizers.. 



The provision for statistical investigation in this Department has 

 sometimes been less than that provided by a single State for a similar 

 purpose.. It was but $10,000 in 1876, a sum not sufficient for the salaries 

 of a meager clerical force for compilation in the office, when $50,000 was 

 necessary properly to supplement and complete the gratuitous work of 

 the statistical corps worth three times that sum. A moderate increase 

 was obtained for the coming year, on the demand of the House Committee 

 on Agriculture, yet the $15,000 given was far less than the allowance in the 

 infancy of the division, when the requirements of its service were not a 

 fourth as great as at present. A member of the committee from North 

 Carolina, in the discussion, declared " that the amount of information col- 

 lected by this Department cannot be procured from any other source at a 

 cost ten times as much as asked for by the Committee on Agriculture." 

 An influential member from New York asserted that " every interest in 

 tliis country can obtain appropriations more readily than the agricultural 

 interest." A Pennsylvania member believed that the increase would be 

 repaid "ten times, probably a hundred times, to the people of the 

 country- in the information brought to them." The following statement 

 of the work of this division, made by the Statistician at the unanimous 

 request of the Committee on Agriculture, was ordered to be printed in 

 the Congressional Kecord, and will convey some idea of the work reason- 

 ably reqiiired of this branch of the Department service : 



lu response to the request of your committee for a showing of the inadequacy of the 

 proposed appropriation for the Statistical Division of this Department, allow mo to 

 present the following considerations : 



The appropriation is for the entire expenses, including clerical service, of this division, 

 the current work of which includes — 



1. Statistical investigation in more than twenty-five hundred counties of the United 

 States.. 



2, The crop-reporting system now including our organized corps of correspondents 

 in seventeen hundred of the principal counties. 



3., Investigations for furnishing advanced and practical original material for the 

 annual volume. 



4. Record and tabulation of such statistics, with current data from official etatistica 

 of States, boards of agriculture, and of trade. 



5.,. Translation and compilation of foreign, official, and other statistics of agriculture. 



6. Writing and editing fifteen hundred printed pages, annually, of regular and special 

 reports, and preparing an equivalent of one thousand pages more for industrial^ com- 



