AMERICAN DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume VI, Issue 5, 15 May 1913, Page 522

AMERICAN DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

In concluding his sixteen years’ work of directing the United States Department of Agriculture, Secretary Wilson reviews the progress of American agriculture during that period, and in particular the development of the Department of Agriculture, more particularly its great publication work. When Mr. Wilson (a native of Ayrshire) took charge, says a bulletin of the International Institute of Agriculture, in the year 1897 the farm production of the United States was worth £800,000,000 ; it ended in 1912, with a production valued at £1,906,400,000. The number of persons employed by the Department of Agriculture grew from 2,444 in 1897 to 13,858 on the Ist July, 1912, and the appropriations for the Department increased from £654,580 for the fiscal year ending 30th June, 1898, to £4,948,609 for 1913. In 1897 the mail requests for publications of the Department barely exceeded 500 letters per week. During the past year the weekly mail has exceeded 52,000 letters. With a printing fund of £23,377 the different publications printed in 1897 were 424, and the editions aggregated 6,541,210 copies ; in 1912, with an appropriation of £941,000 the different publications were 2,110, aggregating 36,678,557 copies. In 1897 the number of employees on the Publications Division was 61 ; in 1912 they aggregated 197, an increase of nearly 225 per cent. The 13,858 persons employed by the Department do not by any means represent the expert and administrative officers placed at the service of the American farmer, for each State has its own Department and experiment station, the whole vast network being under the controlling influence of the Federal Service, which has been developed on such progressive principles by the late Scots-American Secretary and Administrator.