90 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



idea of great changes in production, but would be valueless for detailed 

 and particular statement that should even approximate the truth. 



What are our facilities for such work? Meager enough in some re- 

 spects, costing a mere trifle in money, but involving gratuitous work 

 of thousands of earnest men. We have a board of statisticians in each 

 county, trained for the work of comparison with former areas in specific 

 crops, with the normal condition of the plant of each from month to month, 

 and ultimately with the result in quantities produced. These returns are 

 scanned, and any obvious error corrected before recording. The records 

 are made by the counties as reported, summed up and averaged, and 

 such averages corrected by a duplicate record, in which the differences 

 in productive value of the counties is considered. The corrected result 

 stands as an average, not inevitably of the whole State, but of such por- 

 tion, half or two-thirds, or whatever area is reported of the entire State. 



Now, these men are fallible and. may err in judgment. If their exact 

 figures are taken, and made to cover unreported areas as well, and their 

 errors are annually piled on errors, the cumulative inaccuracy might 

 become something utterly, if not monstrously, unreliable. W^hat is done 

 next? Here is where all routine arithmetic, all ordinary clerical effort, 

 is found unavailing and worthless. There are now tests to be api)lied by 

 which errors are eliminated; first, by comparison of results of separate 

 returns made at different times, as changes in acreage tested by returns 

 of quantity produced, rate of yield per acre, etc. When discrepancies are 

 found, they must be reconciled by an investigation of the local circum- 

 stances affecting the result, the history of the season in the monthly 

 returns of condition, returns of prices as a valuable indication of 

 increased or decreased supply, the various existing causes of local 

 changes in cropping, and outside data from State or other reports. 



In the case of the principal crops in the older and settled States, 

 these methods diligently pursued, with a knowledge of the quality of 

 soils and special cropping of every slope and valley in the United 

 States, it is possible to obtain very satisfactory results. Kemarkable 

 accuracy, even in the absence of yearly State reports, has been attained 

 in some notable cases of fluctuating production. Illinois, for instance, 

 promising nearly 250,000,000 bushels of corn in July, was credited with 

 scarcely half that amount in November, 1SC9. The census of the fol- 

 lowing year corroborated a deficiency of more than 120,000,000 bushels. 

 The wheat-crop was reported at almost the exact figures given by 

 the census; and the numbers of farm-animals Avere as near as an inde- 

 pendent census by the same marshals would have made it. In the 

 South and distant West, in the shadow of the war and amid the rush 

 of new settlement, similar accuracy was not possible. It is gratifying 

 to know that substantial progress in the direction of accuracy has been 

 made, which, with better facilities in the future, may bo materially 

 quickened. 



CROPS OF THE PAST YEAR. 



Corn.— The crop of 1870 is placed at nearly l,2Sd,000,000 bushels, only 

 37,000,000 less than the great crop of 1875. The rate of yield per acre 

 is 25 bushels, which is about 4 bushels per acre less than last year. 

 The acreage of Illinois is placed at 8,920,000 acres, an area about 50 per 

 cent, greater than that of the State of New Hampshire. Iowa and ]\Iis- 

 Bouri come next. 



The surplus of the crop of 1875 has had an effect in reducing the aver- 

 age price from 42 (in that year) to 37 cents. 



Wheat — The reported deficiency of 30,000,000 bushels of spring- wheat 



