21 



USES OF AGRICULTURAL STA- 

 TISTICS. 



By JOHN R. DODGE. 



In this age of the world it can scarcely be nec- 

 essary seriously to ask the question, What profit 

 te there in Agricultural Statistics? There is no 

 farmer of intelligence who is not himself a sta- 

 tistician. He observes carefully the facts of ag- 

 riculture, and of all science and art applicable 

 to agriculture, classifies them and makes deduc- 

 tions from them, and governs his practical 

 operations in accordance with their teaching. 

 He plows and sows, reaps and mows, harvests 

 and stores and sells with the aid of his own sys- 

 tem of agricultural statistics. But his own ob- 

 servation or desultory investigation must be 

 quite too limited I The facts which affect him 

 are not confined to his farm, his county, state or 

 country, but include in their range the entire 

 world the world of agricultural production and 

 consumption, supply and demand, price and 

 value, freight and sale. In this age of telegraphs, 

 too, the statistician must not only be ubiquitous 

 in locality, but instantaneous in celerity of col- 

 lection, classification and deduction. Herein 

 lies the necessity of professional statisticians, 

 whose function it is to reduce the truths con- 

 tained in a world of facts to order, to make of 

 agricultural statistics a science. 



The uses of this science are golden in immedi- 

 ate result. The cunning tradesman, alert for 

 crop news, scans the prospect and prepares to 

 wrench from the farmer the results of his hard 

 labor. Statistics stands guard over the farmer's 

 interest, foils the schemes of the speculator and 

 saves the producer's money. A farmer in Mis- 

 souri writes me that my advice relative to pros- 

 pective prices of pork saved him a thousand 

 dollars in a single season. The speculating class 

 is organized for the plunder of the farmer, and 

 the necessity is imminent for the earliest and 

 fullest information for his protection. 



By agricultural statistics the farmer is able to 

 compare and test the practieal results of stock 

 improvement, experiment in culture, and sys- 

 tems of agriculture. By it he can refute the 

 universal applicability of the sweeping commer- 

 cial adage, which is deemed by many a law, that 

 the home price of a product is always governed 

 by the ruling price in the country to which it is 

 exported. Our corn crop is too heavy, both in 

 avoirdupois and in cash, to yield perceptibly to 

 the influence of foreign demand. Until recently 

 the exports have not exceeded three per cent. 

 The tail cannot " wag the dog" so easily. It is 

 curious to see how uniformly and proportion- 

 ally price advances as production recedes. In 

 1874 we had a so-called failure in the corn crop. 

 I estimate it at 850,000,000 bushels. In 1875 the 

 aggregate was enormous. I make it more than 

 1,300,000,000, and yet the value of the great crop 

 was but one per cent, greater than that of the 



" failure" the one $555,000,000, the other $650,- 

 000,000. 



As to wheat a different rule obtains. The price 

 does not depend primarily and principally on 

 quantity. With poor European harvests a large 

 crop may bring a high price with abundance 

 abroad, a small crop at home, if it leaves a sur- 

 plus, may bear a comparatively low price. 



Statistics teaches also the true value and tem- 

 porary uses of pioneer farming, of the produc- 

 tion of specialties and the true value " in the 

 long run," for permanent results, of rational, 

 scientific, restorative agriculture. There are 

 problems presented daily which only agricult- 

 ural statistics can solve, and upon which largely 

 depends the future prosperity of the farming 

 interest. We cannot here enumerate them, but 

 a reference to one or two may suffice. The en- 

 quiry has been often made of late, is PRODUC- 

 TION DECLINING ? It has been assumed that we 

 produce in proportion to population less of the 

 great staples of production than formerly. It is 

 the province of agricultural statistics to decide 

 the question. The census alone cannot deter- 

 mine it. Such is the fluctuation in rate of yield 

 that the supply of a given staple may be actually 

 increasing, while the product of the census year 

 may be less than in its predecessor ten years be- 

 fore. For instance, corn for 1869 was returned 

 760,944,549 bushels, and in 1859 the figures were 

 838,792,742. It has often been asserted, on the 

 strength of these returns, that corn production 

 was declining, not only per capita, but in abso- 

 lute comparison of quantity. Is it so ? The year 

 1869 witnessed what in country parlance is called 

 a "failure" of the corn crop. It is plainly folly 

 to take such a crop for comparison. And this 

 fact illustrates the absolute necessity of annual 

 estimates, to supplement decennial returns. 

 Since 1869 there have been six harvests exclusive 

 of the present one. Of these six the largest and 

 smallest stand in juxtaposition, the one in 1875^ 

 the largest ever made is 1,321,000,000 bushels, and 

 the other, another failure in 1874, 850,000,000 

 bushels. The increase in a single year is fifty-sir 

 per cent. In 1870 and 1872 the product was near- 

 ly 1,100,000,000. The average of annual estimates, 

 for 1 he six years since the census, 1,047,000,000 

 bushels ; and this confirms the opinion founded 

 on careful study of the history of cropping in 

 1869, that it was scarcely more than three-fourths 

 of a full crop. Now let us examine a period of 

 twenty-six years. We find that the yield per 

 capita in 1849 was 25.5 bushels; in 1859, 26.6 bush- 

 els, and in 1869, the year of a three-fourths crop, 

 19.7 bushels the same result as that deduced 

 from the period since that census. If we take 

 the year 1875, the result is excessive, 30 bushels 

 per capita, but include it in the period of six 

 years past and we have 25.5 precisely the supply 

 of 1849. 



As to wheat, a general deduction from com- 

 parison of census exhibits is less erroneous. The 

 increase in round numbers was from 100,000,000 

 to 173,000,000 and again in 1869 to 287,000.000. Now 



