REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 89 



mercial, and other orgauizations ; iu all, an annual average of seventy-five hundred 

 manuscript pages. 



For this "worlv, at its initiation thirteen years ago, $20,000 was appropriated, in addi- 

 tion to the salary of the Statistician. With the decrease of appropriations, a few years 

 later, as the war-begotten labors of other branches of the civil service declined, the 

 pro rata system of reduction was applied to this new work, when its importance and 

 usefulness demanded increase, and the appropriation was cut down to i$15,000. Last 

 year it was reduced to $10,000 for all these purposes, when the salaries of the regular 

 force of clerks employed iu tabulating and recording amounted to $10,600, leaving 

 nothing for collecting statistics, statistical investigations, or the preparation of mate- 

 rial for the annual volume or other work. This staggering blow might have been 

 regarded as a vote of censure, but for the fact that on the day before an appropriation 

 of $130,000 was voted for the printing for congressional distribution of S00,000 copies 

 of the annual, for which no future provision was apparently desired. But it was evi- 

 dently an accident of the conference committee, as it was less than provision made ia 

 the House bill, which was enlarged by a Senate amendment. 



The appropriation proposed in the present bill, $5,000, if all applied to the collection 

 of statistics, will not give twenty cents for each monthly county return or pay the 

 postage between our county correspondents. If applied to the routine office-work 

 exclusively, it would not pay $2 each per day for the smallest force for its possible 

 accomplishment. If used for investigations and writing for the annual, all other work 

 being discarded, it could not produce a volume worthy an edition of 200,000 copies, or 

 even 10,000. In fact, it would be far better to blot out the $5,000 and the division and 

 its work togetiier, and with it the Department, rather than to degrade and dwarf to 

 utter inefficiency a branch of the service which has possibilities of eminent usefulness 

 and needed protection to both producers and consumers, who have already been sav^d 

 the plunder of millions "by heartless speculators through its instrumentality. 



You know well the history of agricultural appropriations; that a hundred dollars has 

 been given in the aid of commerce to every dollar appropriated for the iiromotion or 

 protection of agriculture. There is no lack of provision for investigation in aid of other 

 industries. One of the geological explorationsof the Rocky Mountains in 187G obtained 

 $75,000 ;■ another, $40,000 ; a third, $25,000, and $40,000 more were given for illustratiaus 

 of two of them. In the same year the appropriation for the obsei-vation ind report of 

 storms was ^470,000 for the benefit of commerce. There was appropriated for clerical 

 service in compiling commercial statistics during the same year $59,440, and an addi- 

 tional fund of $20,000 for special investigation. There was also as large a sum appro- 

 priated for the preparation of a single annual of mining statistics in the same year as 

 was given for all the operations of the Statistical Division. And yet there is no Gov- 

 ernment publication for which the popular demand is so imperative and public appre- 

 ciation so marked as for the reports of agriculture. 



We have at least the value of $150,000 per annum in gratuitous service of public- 

 spirited citizens. We need $50,000 per annum to supplement this work and render it 

 truly efficient. But for the present year $20,000 is as small a sum as should be given 

 for present purposes. 



CEOP ESTIMATES OF THE YEAR. 



In former times there were attempts at estimates of tlie quantities 

 produced of principal crops, but they were either futile or so unsatisfac- 

 tory that they were soon abandoned. The difficulties of the work are suf- 

 ficient to stagger the determination of any one to make such attempt. 

 The national census, costing millions once in ten years, is more a series 

 of minor estimates than an actual enumeration, so far as crops are con- 

 cerned ; the defective memory of the farmer as to the crops of the pre- 

 vious year, which may never have been actually measured, is the best 

 dependence of the census-taker, when he is too conscientious to take 

 second-hand estimates of neighbors or make draughts upon his imagina- 

 tion for facts. 



Yet estimates must be made, and are daily made, even before a crop 

 is half grown, and published as a guide to trade operations, most fre- 

 quently by those interested in speculation. A traveler rides by rail, 

 through tunnels and cuts and over barren slopes, by night and day, and 

 is ready for the most detailed and accurate of estimates; and the 

 country trader and railroad-agent is equally ambitious and confident. 

 Thousands of such irregular and unsystematic, estimates might give an 



