used by it, and when only prompt and energetic action
could be successful, there were in none of these States any laws
authorizing this Department to eradicate the malady or giving the State
officials power to cooperate with it for this purpose. The Department
even lacked both the requisite appropriation and authority.

By securing State cooperation in connection with authority from Congress
the work of eradication has been pressed successfully, and this dreaded
disease has been extirpated from the Western States and also from the
Eastern States, with the exception of a few restricted areas, which are
still under supervision. The danger has thus been removed, and trade and
commerce have been freed from the vexatious State restrictions which
were deemed necessary for a time.

During the past four years the process of diffusion, as applied to the
manufacture of sugar from sorghum and sugar cane, has been introduced
into this country and fully perfected by the experiments carried on
by the Department of Agriculture. This process is now universally
considered to be the most economical one, and it is through it that the
sorghum-sugar industry has been established upon a firm basis and the
road to its future success opened. The adoption of this diffusion
process is also extending in Louisiana and other sugar-producing parts
of the country, and will doubtless soon be the only method employed for
the extraction of sugar from the cane.

An exhaustive study has also within the same period been undertaken of
the subject of food adulteration and the best analytical methods for
detecting it. A part of the results of this work has already been
published by the Department, which, with the matter in course of
preparation, will make the most complete treatise on that subject that
has ever been published in any country.

The Department seeks a progressive development. It would combine the
discoveries of science with the economics and amelioration of rural
practice. A supervision of the endowed experimental-station system
recently provided for is a proper function of the Department, and is now
in operation. This supervision is very important, and should be wisely
and vigilantly directed, to the end that the pecuniary aid of the
Government in favor of intelligent agriculture should be so applied as
to result in the general good and to the benefit of all our people, thus
justifying the appropriations made from the public Treasury.

The