lecting crude materials for scientific analysis, a very rich harvest of knowledge would soon be obtained.
"The regular report of the condition and prospect of the growing crops, from every part of our country to a central office, as contemplated by your memorialists, furnishing the data of official bulletins would be of sufficient importance to both producer and dealer to secure the approval of the Government. But, when all commercial countries are to be embraced in the same system of observation and research, its importance becomes overwhelming. In consequence of the introduction of steam, the improvement of navigation, the construction of railroads, the spread of commerce, the use of the telegraph, and the rapidly increasing facilities of intercourse, the farmer and planter of the United States is almost as much interested, practically, in knowing the state, prospect, and amount of crops in foreign lands as in his own country.
"The wheat grower of Illinois is not only concerned to know whether the wheat crop of other States is above or below the average, but also whether a short or very abundant crop has been harvested in Europe. The crops in the other parts of the world tend to increase or diminish the price of his own grain; for in the markets abroad he is compelled to compete with the grain grown upon the waters of the Black Sea, in the Canadas, and elsewhere. In Liverpool, the corn of the Danube competes with that of Kentucky and Indiana. The sugar planter in Louisiana is directly interested in the abundance of that crop in Cuba and Brazil. A short crop of cotton in India and Egypt enhances by millions the value of that crop in the valley of the Mississippi; and so with all the other great staples of agriculture. To enable the farmers to know in advance the prospects of the growing crops with which their own must compete in the market of the world, is to enable them to reap the just reward of their own industry; to refuse it is to place them at the mercy of the dealer.
