422 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



are other crops that have shorter seasons and fewer changes. Hay is 

 soon made. If conditions are favorable on the first of June a drought 

 must come speedily to aftect the expected result. Corn that is well re- 

 ported in July and August may be represented by 100 in October, or a 

 long drought or a September frost may cut it down to 50. These ex- 

 planations are so obvious as to seem unnecessary, yet there are repeated 

 inquiries showing the necessity; and they are given here for the benefit 

 of all who fail to understand the purport of the figures. 



So much has been said of "condition." As the harvest approaches 

 the result is asked by counties in plain figures — the yield per acre in 

 bushels or pounds, the aggregate county product compared with the 

 previous year, &c. At the time of seeding the area in each county is 

 asked, 100 representing the number of acres harvested the previous 

 year. Our system in its essential features is the one used by the most 

 advanced nations in the world; it has been adopted by the State bu- 

 reaus, and by a few newspapers that attempt to give really systematic 

 crop returns. Its essential feature is the decimal system, which is be- 

 coming the cosmopolitan plan in weights and measures. It was first 

 nsed by this Department in crop returns in 1864, upon the organization 

 of its statistical work. It had previously been used in crop reporting 

 by Mr. Orange Judd in the American Agriculturist, who was perhaps 

 the first to use it in this country. It furnishes simply an opportunity 

 for nicer discriminations than the old unsystematic and indefinite report 

 of "half a crop," "a failure," or "serious damage," the intended mean- 

 ing of which no one can put in positive figures. A reporter's deliberate 

 judgment can certainly be presented far more accurately in decimals of 

 a full crop. 



The popularity of the crop reports is attested by the fact that nearly 

 every newspaper, grain dealer, or speculator assumes to have original 

 sources of crop information, in some cases with the least modicum of 

 ground for the assumption. Pretentious estimates, detailed and specific, 

 have gone the rounds of the metropolitan and country press unchal- 

 lenged and apparently accepted, which have been copied from the De- 

 partment estimates of the previous year, and made to do duty for the new 

 crop as original information from trustworthy private sources. It would 

 be well if the press were more discriminating, making distinction at 

 least between well-digested and systematic efforts of legitimate news- 

 papers in statistical collection and the multitude of charlatans and ad- 

 venturers and tools of speculators. There is room for all legitimate 

 work in crop statistics; and the best will be done with modesty and in 

 the spirit of fairness and honesty. 



CROP ESTIMATES OF 1883. 



The principal products of last year were indicated with approximate 

 nearness early in the season, and some of the principal were given in 

 detail by States in the last report. At the close of each year the re- 

 sults of each month's returns are compared, and discrepancies involved 

 in them duly examined and corrected, for publication as a permanent 

 record of the year's harvests, with values, as well as prices and rates oi 

 yield. Their tabulations by States are given in the following pages. 



CORN. 



The area of this cereal was increased in 1883 over 3 per cent., from 

 05,650,546 to 68,301,889. This is an increase of 9 per cent, in four years 



