Show MAKING CROP REPORTS painstaking effort of government to serve the people once each month in the year except february a printed card Is tacked up in rural all over the coun try on which appears a statement ot the conditions and prospects of the am crops of the united states the method by which these crop statistics are battered ba is a good example of the wide reaching activity and painstaking effort of the government to serve the people three main each in dependent of the others furnish the information and insure the greatest possible accuracy first come the county correspondents of whom there are about twenty seven hundred one n each county of considerable agrical tural importance these men with their assistants form the best estimate they can of the conditions in their own fields and forward their conclusions to the state statistical agent next are the township correspondents of whom there are from six to fifteen in each county these men send their own in dependent estimates direct to the state statistician lastly there is the caal force employed by the statistician himself numbering from twenty to six hundred men according to the agricultural conditions of the state and a supplementary body of special field agents who systematically tra verse the producing portions of the country procure all the data possible and analyze the situation alon in regard to the final yield per acre Is further obtained from reports regularly received from a very large number of individual producers each of whom reports for his own farm onla the whole number of those who help to make the government chop re ports what they are thus reaches the enormous total of two hundred and fifty thousand the frequency the at to details and the accuracy of these reports make them of immense importance to the intelligent po ducer of wheat or cotton or livestock they are a barometer of probable prices an a gage of his income to the trader they furnish data on which to buy or sell and to banks railroads and indeed to all sorts of interests they serve as heralds of general or of hard times youth s companion |