AMERICAN CROP REPORTS

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1920, Page 10

AMERICAN CROP REPORTS

HOW "SCOOPS" ARE PREVENTED. Writing in The Forecast (New York), Mr. Irving _ Chandler tells amusingly of the precautions that are taken to ensure that newspaper men shall have access to the crop reports of. the United States Department of Agriculture at precisely the same instant, and that one shall not see them a second before the others. If the Government has not yet reached the point of prohibiting epeculation in foodstuffs, saya Mr. Chandler, it at least provides scrupulously for a "fair field and no favour." The reports reveal to those buying and selling grain, cotton, tobacco, etc., the probable future supplies and the consequent trend of prices. Bribes, too enormous to seem probable, surely would bo offered for "inside" information at times, if there were any laxity in thehandling of crop reports. _ But there is not. Mr. Chandler continues: —

Tho Government carries to an extreme its protection of those figures which may seem to the average householder rather dry mysteries, but which are written in letters of gold and have the magic of guiding voices to the food speculators. It locks the Crop Report Board into a room with guards stationed at tho doors and telephones disconnected until the very minute when the report io issued. Bach member of the board prepares his own individual and independent estimate for each crop and State. Then' all are compared, discussed, and explained, and final figures adopted. Then the fun begins. In an outer room is a group of newspaper men, each with a telephone near by, already connected with his office. Shortly before tho moment appointed for release of the crop report copies of it are placed face downward on a-- table, and each man gets his hand on one, like a runner set on his mark. They "point" for their telephones like dogs indicating game. A signal is given br a- high official of the department, and the men make for the telephones as if their lives depended unon it—as, indeed, their livelihoods may! Then all over the country the news is posted, printed, read almost with 'bated breath by some, but passed over for the score of tho latest ball game by others whom it nevertheless affects most acutely. Even boforo the reporters began their lively sprint, before the board was locked in its.isolated room, the department was watching over the inviolability of its own crop news. There are ten crop specialists for the different leading orops, and about 175,000 voluntary crop reporters. Some of these arc farmers or farm-observ-ers, while others are buyers and handlers of grain and livestock. The returns for each class of reporter are tabulated and averaged separately for a check on the rest. So much for inclusivencss and accuracy To ensure eecrecy even the tabulators and computers who make, up tho t-otals # do not know to which State they pertain. And the final telegraphic reports and comments of the field agents are kept looked up in the offico of the Secretary of Agriculture until they are turned over to the Crop .Reporting Board in its guarded room." Members of the board and all other members of tho department concerned v/ith crop estimating arc under heavy penalties not to speculate in any products of tho soil, not to give out advance information, and not knowingly to compile or .issue false information.