32 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



tion of the beet-sugar industry and its gradual extension until tlie 

 entire consumption of sugar in this country shall be met by a home 

 supply. Still no one doubts, who knows anything about the subject, 

 that any one of the services mentioned will return to the Government 

 in money value, many times over the entire cost of the Dei)artment. 

 Many instances have been supplied of carefully estimated savings 

 efiected by the remedies or prevention secured as a result of investi- 

 gation by the Department both in the case of injurious insects and of 

 plant diseases, but in the main the gains thus effected are quite beyond 

 calculation. 



Who, for instance, can estimate the value of the rescue from annihila- 

 tion of the California orange industry through the introduction of the 

 Australijin parasite of the scale insect which was devastating the citrus 

 orchards in that State ? Equally beyond accurate estimate is the value 

 of the introduction of the Bahia or navel orange by the horticulturist 

 of the Department, Mr. William Saunders. 



Specific examples of money saved through the warnings of the 

 Weather Bureau are numerous and easily established. In 1894 the 

 W^eather Bureau, by its warnings, saved from the rocks, at the entrance 

 of Chesapeake Bay, the ship KappahanocJc, with a cargo worth over 

 $600,000. Furthermore, it is estimated that in the fall of that year 

 2,305 vessels, valued at $36,283,913, but for the Weather Bureau warn- 

 ings would have put to sea in approaching storms and heavy losses 

 would have followed. 



Frequently throughout the year minor savings, through the services 

 of this Bureau, are reported from all sections of the country, aggregat- 

 ing a sum far in excess of its annual exj)enditures. 



The discovery by the Division of Forestry of the real value of pine- 

 tree timber, after the trees had been boxed for turpentine, has been 

 estimated by reliable authorities as worth not less than $2,000,000 to 

 the Southern States. 



Secretary Rusk's estimate. — Instances of the money value of services 

 actually rendered by the Department jnight be enumerated indefinitely. 

 Ample and sufficient grounds exist for the confidence that the new work 

 undertaken from year to year will result in valuable relurus in the 

 future similar to those instanced. One-tenth has not been told, but 

 enough has been said, without touching at all on the work of many of 

 the divisions of the Department, to justify to the most skeptical the 

 statement of a former Secretary, the Hon. J. M. Busk, who, in his 

 annual report for 1891, said: 



"In concluding the review of the work done under the several 

 divisions of this Department since the date of my last annual report, 

 it gives me pleasure to state, and I say this advisedly, that each one of 

 more than a dozen divisions whose work I have reviewed has returned 

 in actual value to the country during the past year far more than the 

 entire annual appropriation accorded to this Department." 



