led information necessary to enable
the Secretary of Agriculture to make, as the statute provides, a
satisfactory report to Congress. The boards of management of the
several stations with great alacrity and cordiality have approved the
amendment to the law providing this supervision of their expenditures,
anticipating that it will increase the efficiency of the stations and
protect their directors and managers from loose charges concerning their
use of public funds, besides bringing the Department of Agriculture into
closer and more confidential relations with the experimental stations,
and through their joint service largely increasing their usefulness to
the agriculture of the country.

Acting upon a recommendation contained in the report of 1893, Congress
appropriated $10,000 "to enable the Secretary of Agriculture to
investigate and report upon the nutritive value of the various articles
and commodities used for human food, with special suggestions of full,
wholesome, and edible rations less wasteful and more economical than
those in common use."

Under this appropriation the Department has prepared and now has nearly
ready for distribution an elementary discussion of the nutritive value
and pecuniary economy of food. When we consider that fully one-half of
all the money earned by the wage earners of the civilized world is
expended by them for food, the importance and utility of such an
investigation is apparent.

The Department expended in the fiscal year 1893 $2,354,809.56, and
out of that sum the total amount expended in scientific research was
45.6 per cent. But in the year ending June 30, 1894, out of a total
expenditure of $1,948,988.38, the Department applied 51.8 per cent of
that sum to scientific work and investigation. It is therefore very
plainly observable that the economies which have been practiced in
the administration of the Department have not been at the expense of
scientific research.

The recommendation contained in the report of the Secretary for 1893
that the vicious system of promiscuous free distribution of its
departmental documents be abandoned is again urged. These publications
may well be furnished without cost to public libraries, educational
institutions, and the officers and libraries of States and of the
Federal Government; but from all individuals applying for them a price
covering the cost of the document asked for should be required. Thus the
publications and documents would b