It would take a good-sized library to tell adequately all the things
the Department of Agriculture is doing for the people of the United
States. A formal program issued each year sets forth in barest outlines
the undertakings on which the Department is engaged. Although only
a few brief paragraphs are devoted to each project, one of these
“Programs of Work” fills about 600 pages of fine print.
This Department is devoted to the two-fold task of gathering and
disseminating information; primarily for the benefit of farmers, but
also, directly or indirectly, for that of every man, woman and child in
this country. It is also charged with the duty of administering various
laws designed to safeguard the health and welfare of the people. Under
this head come the inspection of food and drugs, meat inspection,
protection of useful birds and animals, supervision of the national
forests, and a host of other useful activities.
Let us set down at random some of the astonishingly varied tasks with
which the Department has lately been occupied. Last year nearly sixty
million animals were slaughtered for food under the inspection of the
Bureau of Animal Industry. The Biological Survey treated more than
thirteen million acres of land with poisoned grain to destroy rodent
pests. The Bureau of Crop Estimates published monthly data obtained
from an army of about two hundred thousand volunteer crop reporters.
The Bureau of Public Roads administered the Federal-Aid Road Act of
July 11, 1916, under which the Government is to cooperate with the
states in road-building by means of appropriations which began with
$5,000,000 for the year 1916, and will increase annually by $5,000,000
to $25,000,000 for the year 1921. The Bureau of Soils continued its
work of mapping and classifying the soils, which work now extends
over nearly a million square miles. The Weather Bureau established
new observing stations in the West Indies, to keep a lookout for
hurricanes, and added the study of volcanic phenomena to its wide range
of scientific undertakings. The Federal Horticultural Board conducted
an immense campaign to rid the cotton-growing regions of the country of
the pink boll-worm. The Department as a whole led a nation-wide effort
to provide means of feeding a hungry world. In a single year the area
planted with agricultural crops was increased by 22,000,000 acres. In
1918 the planted area amounted to 289,000,000 acres. During the same
year the country produced about nineteen and a half billion pounds of
meat: an increase of about four billion pounds since 1914.
A branch of the Department known as the States Relations Service is
engaged in educational work on a vast scale. All over the country
its “county agents” are giving direct instruction and advice to the
farmers. There are about twenty-four hundred of these officials now
in the field, besides 1,700 “home demonstration agents,” who help the
farmers’ wives to solve their domestic problems. Farm work is made
interesting and profitable to the rising generation by means of some
forty different kinds of clubs, such as Pig Clubs, Corn Clubs, Canning
Clubs and Poultry Clubs, in which are enrolled more than two million
boys and girls.
Lastly, the Department is by far the largest publisher of agricultural
information in the world. Last year it issued over twenty-five hundred
documents of all kinds, in editions aggregating nearly one hundred
million copies. Included in this stupendous flood of literature were
millions of copies of Farmers’ Bulletins, distributed free of charge,
and each devoted to some practical topic connected with rural life and
industries.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 7, No. 11, SERIAL No. 183
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: EXHIBIT OF BUREAU OF FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC COMMERCE]
_THE STORY OF UNCLE SAM_
_Promoting Commerce_