18 International Agricultural Institute. 



work is, however, so far advanced that its early completion is 

 expected, as well as its publication in the Annals for the year 

 1910, prior to the inauguration of a regular Intelligence 

 Service. 



The Branch dealing with Rural Labour is still in process 

 of formation. The Permanent Committee, fearing that an 

 excess of work undertaken at the outset with a comparatively 

 new staff might not be completed, authorised the President 

 to request a gentleman who is a specialist on the subject to 

 prepare a Report on statistics relating to wages and rural 

 labour in various countries. In view of the favourable 

 opinion expressed by the Third Permanent Committee 

 regarding the publications of the Italian Department of 

 Labour, the President entrusted the task to one of its officials. 

 The plan of the inquiry includes, for each country : the nature 

 of the census of the rural population ; the official statistics 

 regarding the movement of the rural population at home and 

 abroad; and the methods of collecting official statistics of 

 wages, and the result thereby obtained. The Report is now 

 complete as a whole, but many details are still required, and 

 it is therefore not yet available. When it has been submitted 

 • to the Permanent Committee and to the respective delegates, 

 it will be published with the full conviction that its contents 

 are correct and exhaustive. 



My Report ends here. I have endeavoured to give it 

 rather an objective character, leaving it to you to con- 

 sider the facts and the methods to which it refers. We now 

 await your approbation of our work during the past year, 

 i.e. the initial period, which is perhaps the most anxious time 

 in the history of the Institute. We await your approbation 

 with confidence, ready at once to undertake the task of 

 collecting details regarding the agriculture of the world. 

 The preparatory work has now reached such a point that we 

 are fully convinced of the possibility of dealing with a periodi- 

 cal and regular service of information. It is because we have 

 confidence in ourselves and in your goodwill that, for the first 

 time, we have inserted in the Budget the annual sum of 

 ;£ 12,000 — a grant most generously made by H.M. the King 

 of Italv for the regular working of the Institute. 



