344 DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS. 



restricting its usefulness. Few Government bureaus, civil or mili- 

 tary, have their operations extending, as has this office, into the 

 remotest and most sparsely populated civil divisions of the country. 

 Were the correspondents employed in the collection of crop intelli- 

 gence paid a fair rate of compensation for the service they render, 

 the cost of maintaining an organization five times as numerous as the 

 census enumerators would call attention, as probably nothing else 

 will, to the magnitude of the Department's statistical service. But 

 the fact that the reports upon which the work of the Division of Statis- 

 tics so largely depends are made without compensation in no wise 

 diminishes the amount of labor involved in their compilation and 

 analysis; indeed, the list of correspondents is more difficult to keep up 

 to the necessary standard in number, if not in quality, than it would 

 be if it consisted of persons adequately remunerated for their services. 

 The new directions in which the work of the Division might be made 

 of service to the agricultural interests of the country if its organiza- 

 tion were made more elastic by its conversion into a bureau and the 

 appropriation for its maintenance were made more adequate to its 

 needs are so numerous that an addition of 150,000 to the present 

 appropriation would not be an excessive provision for the new work 

 that could at once be undertaken. 



THE STATISTICAL LIBRARY. 



While there is no branch of statistics having any close relation to 

 the agricultural industry that is not more or less adequately repre- 

 sented in the Department's statistical library, as regards the litera- 

 ture of prices it is believed to be the best equipped library in the 

 country, and no reasonable expenditure that may be necessary to 

 maintain its present high standard should be withheld. Its card 

 index to agricultural statistics is also pronounced by visitors who have 

 occasion to consult it to be exceptionally complete and well arranged, 

 and reasonable provision for it^ continuation is recommended. 



O 



