REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 



467 



discriminate between the true and the false, and to discount the state- 

 ments that are manufactured to aft'ect the market. These remarks 

 apply only to statistics deliberately made for the purposes of dishonest 

 gain. To assume that such practices are unknown would be the height 

 of confidiug simplicity. Nor is it strange that in the eager hunt for 

 news 'reputable public news-gatherers should inadvertently accept the 

 statements of interested persons concerning crop production. 



u It is the province of official statistics to protect the producer and 

 consumer, by an accurate forecast of crop production, against the specu- 

 lator, who would confiscate the profits of the farmer and reduce the 

 bread supply of the poor without giving the pretense of an equivalent. 

 Many millions of dollars have been already saved from this piracy by 

 official crop reports." 



The best interpreter of statistics, to the popular mind, is the graphic 

 method of illustration. It has been said to be impossible for the humau 

 mind to measure accurate 1 ^ and instantly the purporc and true extent 

 of a billion. To the ordinary mind the real meaning of figures is dimly 

 perceived. Their examination, therefore, becomes intolerably u dry." 

 It requires a statistical "education to prepare one for utilizing fully 

 statistical statements. If the eyt 1 and through it all the perceptive 

 faculties, can aid in measurements and comparisons the thorough un- 

 derstanding of the occult and mysterious figures arrayed in solid and 

 impenetrable phalanx, the help to the novice is invaluable. To make 

 the meaning of important facts in American agriculture so plain that 

 he who runs through.the New Orleans Exposition can read intelligently 

 as he runs, has been the object in the preparation of the diagrams pre- 

 sented for exhibition by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department of 

 Agriculture. 



PROPORTION OF LAND IN FARMS. 



Diagram I has no reference to relative areas in farms in the several 

 States and Territories, but simply to the proportion of the s upe r fi c ia l 

 area of each which is occupied by farms. The horizontal lines repre- 

 sent percentage of the entire area, which the perpendicular lines mark, 

 from left to right, by numbers, one, two, three, to twenty- nine. 



It will be seen that the State most fully occupied is Ohio, which has 

 only six per cent, of its land surface in town area, roads, or waste lands. 

 The Ohio Valley stands above the older settlements, Pennsylvania, 

 New York, or Massachusetts, in the proportion of surface in farms, In- 

 diana having 88.0 per cent. ; Illinois, 88.4. Kentucky, with 84 per cent., 

 fails of the next place, which is taken by the little, but we'll occupied, 

 State of Delaware, with 86.9 per cent. The next in order are Vermont, 

 83.5; Maryland, 81.1; Connecticut, 79.1; New York, 78. 



The divisions having less than 28.9 per cent., the average for the 

 United States, are Louisiana, Minnesota, Texas, Nebraska, California, 

 Florida, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, and all the Territories. Iowa, a 

 new State, had already (in 1880) seven-tenths of her superficial area oc- 

 cupied as farms. 



The mountain area of New England and the Alleghauian system, 

 much of which is unsuitable for farming operations, depress the per- 

 centage in these old States. The average in the six Eastern States is 

 54.1 per cent.; in four Middle States, 72.9; in the Southern, from Mary- 

 land to Kentucky, 43.3 ; in the Western, to the Rocky Mountains, in- 

 cluding Missouri and Kansas on the south, 54.4 j in the Pacific and 



