e secured by those who really desire
them for proper purposes. Half a million of copies of the report of the
Secretary of Agriculture are printed for distribution, at an annual cost
of about $300,000. Large numbers of them are cumbering storerooms at the
Capitol and the shelves of secondhand-book stores throughout the
country. All this labor and waste might be avoided if the
recommendations of the Secretary were adopted.

The Secretary also again recommends that the gratuitous distribution of
seeds cease and that no money be appropriated for that purpose except to
experiment stations. He reiterates the reasons given in his report for
1893 for discontinuing this unjustifiable gratuity, and I fully concur
in the conclusions which he has reached.

The best service of the statistician of the Department of Agriculture
is the ascertainment, by diligence and care, of the actual and real
conditions, favorable or unfavorable, of the farmers and farms of the
country, and to seek the causes which produce these conditions, to the
end that the facts ascertained may guide their intelligent treatment.

A further important utility in agricultural statistics is found in their
elucidation of the relation of the supply of farm products to the demand
for them in the markets of the United States and of the world.

It is deemed possible that an agricultural census may be taken each year
through the agents of the statistical division of the Department. Such a
course is commended for trial by the chief of that division. Its scope
would be:

(1) The area under each of the more important crops. (2) The aggregate
products of each of such crops. (3) The quantity of wheat and corn in
the hands of farmers at a date after the spring sowings and plantings
and before the beginning of harvest, and also the quantity of cotton and
tobacco remaining in the hands of planters, either at the same date or
at some other designated time.

The cost of the work is estimated at $500,000.

Owing to the peculiar quality of the statistician's work and the natural
and acquired fitness necessary to its successful prosecution, the
Secretary of Agriculture expresses the opinion that every person
employed in gathering statistics under the chief of that division should
be admitted to that service only after a thorough, exhaustive, and
successful examination at the hands of the United States Civil Service
Commission. This has led him to call for such examination of ca