282 



REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



while the third has eight times its former prominence, even in a year of 

 low production of spring wheat, and promises to make the proportion 

 9 to 1 in 1877, or 45 per cent. A few years more will find a preponder- 

 ating weight of wheat production beyond the " Father of Waters.^ 



Comparing relative quantities rather than proportions of the crop, 

 we find that the Atlantic coast has held its own, and little more; the 

 central belt produces three times as much ; the trans-Mississippi belt, 

 more than twenty times as much. The figures are as follows : 



That the wheat crop, with a smaller volume and a more active foreign 

 demand, should make so rapid extension is less strange than the nearly 

 equal rate of acceleration of the immense volume of our great natural 

 crop, maize. With less than an increase of 100 per cent, in population, 

 this crop has more than doubled. The quantity produced has actually 

 decreased in the East, it has doubled in the Central States, and is seven 

 times as large beyond the Mississippi. The proportions of the whole 

 crop produced by the three sections are (nearly) as follows : 



The East has declined continuously and hopelessly ; the center has 

 held a determined struggle, yielding only inch by inch ; the West has 

 trod the track of destiny with accelerated step. 



The clerical force of the Division consists only of the Statistician, two 

 assistants, and five other clerks employed in recording, tabulating, «&;c. 

 Translations of French and German form another branch of the pri- 

 mary work in the presentation of foreign statistics. What with direc- 

 tion of this necessary drudgery and its revision when done, and not a 

 little of actual participation in it, there is little time left for philosophic 

 deduction, the elucidation of great truths involved in the figures, and 

 the presentation in clear and fitting terms of the whole subject for the 

 instruction and guidance of the people. The two assistants, Messrs. 

 E. C. Merrick and li. Parkinson, have rendered essential aid in the work 

 of compilation. 



With an expression of regret that a greater progress of statistical in- 

 quiry is debarred by limitation of facilities, and a pardonable pride in 

 whatever of beneficent accomplishment has been made under adverse 

 circumstances, this report is respectfully submitted. 



J. R. DODGE, 



iStatvitieiau. 



Ron. Frederick Watts, 

 Commissidner. 



