Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-07-24
AGRICULTURAL NOTES.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION FOR THE
FARMER AND THE oRCHARnrsT.

RRcoRD-uNIoN by its Agricultural Editor All
matter relating to the agricultural interest viii be
found under this head.
The National Department Of Agriculture.
II would seem that there is some faint pros
pect of waking up at Washington to the
present inadequate facilities afforded by the
Government to the Agricultural Department.
In January last the Committee or Agricult-
ure Of the House of Representatives called
Commissioner LIE Due before them, and put
some questions TO him which show that the
members of this committee at least recognize
the fact that there is some possibility of i'm
provement in the way of greater facilities for
the Department These questions afforded
the Commissioner an opportunity to lay be-
fore Congress and the world statement of
the many disadvantages under which the De-
partment is laboring, and he embraced the
opportunity in manner that enables the
people to see plainly how utterly the indus
trial interests of the country are neglected by
the Government. The Commissioner says
the needs of the Department are many aud
urgent, and he sets them forth in the order
of their importance. First, the Department
needs building in which to carry on the
limited business its restricted pecuniary as
sistance warrants it in undertaking.
The rooms of the old building are SO few and
80 small as greatly TO crowd the employees
and retard the work they haYe in hand. For
instance the room devoted to chemical inves-
tigations-to the investigation of questions
involving the entire science of American ag-
riculture-is but twenty feet square, with
basement of the same size and a small closet.
This is all the space that the United States
nation occupying the largest and most i'm
portant agricultural section of the earth-can
afford for practical investigation of ques-
tions in agricultural chemistry, upon the de-
termination of which millions are involved to
the farmers and to the Government. The
Commissioner remarks: g 1t is simply an
absurdity to think that fraction of the re-
quired work can be done with such lack of
conyeuiences. / have already laid out work
which the chemist informs me viii take four
years to accomplish with his present force"
Think of the great agricultural interests of
the United States waiting four years for a
single chemist with one or two assistants, in
room twenty feet square and with lab
oratory inadequate for the proper equipment
of a common country academy, to determine
whether within all our vast domain sugar
can be produced successfully and profit
ably from sorghum, when upon the
determination of this single question over
fifty millions of dollars year to those inter
ests is at stake The Commissioner says
Any delay in performing some of this work
and publishing the facts thus and thus only
to be ascertained is loss to the country.
The work Is daily accommodating. It comes
to us from every part of the United States
and her Territories It's value can hardly be
overestimated." In Germany the Govern
ment has three laboratories, each costing over
$3.50, 600, and full force of trained chemists
in constant employ for the investigation of
Just such questions as are daily being referred
to cur National Agricultural Department.
In France, too, the Government has all these
important industrial questions investigated
and solved and gives the people the benefit of
them. The wisdom of these two Govern
ments and the want of wisdom in our own
on these subjects is contrasted by the fact
that in both of those countries sugar is largely
produced and exported to the value of mill
ions annually, while the people of the United
States are annually sending millions out of
the country to pay the Germans and
the French for this same sugar. Thus
these scientific questions are allowed
to linger, while enterprise and capital
await their solution and labor goes unem-
ployed, and we buy of foreign countries what
we can and ought to produce at home. Is
there an intelligent man in the United States
who does not believe that we have, some
where in our vast country, soil and climate
as well adapted to the cultivation of sugar as
any in France or Germany? Is there a man
so stngy that he would not contribute few
cents to buy the facilities and pay for a sci
enti6c investigation of the subject? The |
Commissioner states that "the people of the
United States have consumed since 1S49 |
when gold was first discovered in California,
eighteen hundred and odd millions Of dollars
worth of imported sugar and its allied pro-
ducts. During the same years there have
been taken from the mines of California and
other Western States and Territories seven
teen hundred and odd millions of dollars. We
see, then, that it has taken all, and more
than all, the gold and silver we have pro-
duced to pay for the foreign sugar we have
consumed. How this vast sum may be saved
to the country is but one of the many i'm
portant problems we have taken for solution
in our chemical division. Very many other
things of almost equal value might be accom-
plished by this division under better auspi- |
ces." In regard to the division of statistics
the Commissioner says g the burden upon
this division is now too great It should be |
enlarged to double its present strength, so as |
to be able to take up investigations which at |
present it is unable to touch" We of the |
Pacific coast have always been in position
to confirm this statement. The statistics |
OF our crops have never been properly
reported in the monthly or annual reports of |
the department. The fault, as we have al |
ways believed, has not been chargeable to de-
iciencies or imperfections in the system, or
to carelessness or neglect on the part of the
department, but simply to the inadequacy of
the means afforded it by the legislative de-
partment of the Government. We have al
ways held that partial or inaccurate statistics
in regard to the resources and productive in.
dustries Of country published to the world
were of more injury to that country than
benefit. The statistics that have been
gathered and published by the department
heretofore in reference to the Pacific coast
have always been partial and incorrect, and
injurious instead of beneficial to. the coast.