XII.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

In his 1860 annual report the Patent Office's Superintendent of Agricultural Affairs, Thomas G. Clemson, repeated his belief that the "requirements of the present age, and the permanent importance of the subjects embraced in its operations, demand that the powers of this agency of the Government should be enlarged." He justified the "present and contemplated" duties as follows:

1. An organized correspondence with the Agricultural Societies of the United States, and with the learned societies of the civilized world, would elicit correct statistical information which could not be collected in any other manner, and which would be of untold interest and advantage to our country and the world.

2. The publication of a Report on the subject of Agriculture, in which information could be authoritatively presented and diffused, would be of the greatest value.

3. The study of unknown indigenous plants for familiar cultivation in our own country, many of which may doubtless prove an addition of the greatest importance to our wealth.

4. Entomological investigations into the nature and history of the predatory insects which have proved so injurious to our crops of cereals, fruits, &c., and also to timber.

5. Questions of the highest moment and variety, connected with agriculture, requiring chemical aid and investigations in the field as well as the laboratory.

6. Familiar examples of special modes of culture, such as irrigation, might be put into operation and opened to the examination and study of the public, who would thus have ocular demonstrations of the methods of renovating lands, of keeping them in a constant state of fertility, and of producing crops which cannot be obtained in any other way without further outlay than by the use of water. Thousands of acres in the South, now waste and entirely unproductive, might by such means be brought to produce large crops of grass, which cannot be grown in our southern climate as the lands are now cultivated. That which is looked upon as impracticable would thus become feasible and profitable by means of irrigation.

7. The stocking of our rivers with fish such as do not live in them is a matter of great interest, and can only be carried out by the Government. We may judge of its importance when we understand that one million brood of salmon, without special attention or care, will in two years produce ten millions of pounds of the most healthful food. This subject

has not only attracted the attention of European governments, but it has been repeatedly carried into successful operation there, and, upon a limited scale, in a section of this country.

The Superintendent's rationalization of his position led him in his next annual report (1861) to the "conclusion that agriculture, manufactures, and commerce should be united under one general supervision as in France, Italy, and Prussia"; and this opinion was endorsed by Commissioner of Patents D. P. Holloway, who urged the creation of a separate Department of the Productive Arts to care for the industrial interests of the country and especially for agriculture.

A part at least of this plan was adopted by an act of May 15, 1862 (12 Stat. 387), establishing the Department of Agriculture, the "general designs and duties" of which would be "to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants. Under the provisions of the act, a Commissioner of Agriculture was to be named as the Department's "chief executive officer" whose duties would be to "acquire and preserve in his Department all information concerning agriculture which he can obtain by means of books and correspondence, and by practical and scientific experiments, (accurate records of which experiments shall be kept in his office,) by the collection of statistics, and by any other appropriate means within his power; to collect, as he may be able, new and valuable seeds and plants; to test, by cultivation, the value of such of them as may require such tests; to propagate such as may be worthy of propagation, and to distribute them among agriculturists." The Commissioner was to "receive and have charge of all the property of the agricultural division of the Patent Office in the Department of the Interior, including the fixtures and property of the propagating garden."

The new agency, though called a department, was essentially a bureau until 1889, since the organic act did not provide that the Commissioner of Agriculture should have Cabinet status. Isaac Newton, who from Apr. 1861 had been superintendent of the agricultural division of the Patent Office, was appointed on July 1, 1862, as the first Commissioner of Agriculture. He soon increased to about 50 the clerical force of the former agricultural division, engaged a chemist (Charles W. Wetherill, succeeded in 1864 by Henri Erni), established a laboratory, hired a horticulturist (William Saunders) to take charge of the propagating or experimental garden, and initiated greater activity in collecting and publicizing current agricultural data and in distributing seeds and cuttings. In his first annual report he revived the presentation of agricultural statistics, long neglected, and in 1863 he organized a statistical branch under Lewis Bollman and employed an entomologist (Townsend Glover).

In its first year, besides continuing to distribute packages of seeds to members of Congress and others, the new Department "laboriously sought" from every source information that when properly classified would "be disseminated, like the seeds, cereals, and plants, gratuitously." The Commissioner found "the space assigned. . . of a half-dozen rooms in the basement under the Patent Office . . . too limited and inconvenient for any department of this government, and . . . not only insufficient for.. present accommodations, but . . . a positive bar to any increased operations." Not until 1867, however, was the erection of a permanent Department building to begin. This

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was to be constructed on Government Reservation 2, an area lying between Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets, "the canal," and B Street South, in Washington, that had been assigned to the Department for experimental agriculture in 1864.

In July 1863 Commissioner Newton began to issue the Department's series of monthly reports on current agricultural operations, in which appeared (until 1872) the meteorological tables furnished by the Smithsonian Institution. These monthly reports imparted "fresh agricultural facts" derived from the Department's correspondence and other sources, as distinguished from agricultural information of permanent value published in the annual reports. As an example of the latter, the Commissioner in 1864 instituted "a system of correspondence with our consuls abroad"--the first results of which appear in a compilation appended to the 1864 annual report. This system was designed "to elicit information concerning the character and condition of foreign agriculture, and to preserve an exchange of industrial statistics."

The postwar Chief Clerk, James M. Swank, complained that Patents Commissioner Holloway's 1861 report "did not contain one line of statistics relative to agriculture or related subjects, except some tables of milk production, nor a single letter concerning the position of the crops. "He remarked that Newton's 1863 report "contained the first attempt that had been made since the days of [Patents Commissioners] Ellsworth and Burke [i. e., since 1849] to ingraft upon the census returns the statistics of the yearly progress of agricultural production." Ever conscious of the impact of the war upon agriculture, Commissioner Newton brought about an investigation of the practicability of substituting flax and hemp for cotton (see below); and in his 1863 report he described the implications of the wartime work of distributing seed, as follows:

The great, imperative, and increasing calls upon the department for seeds of all kinds, from all sections of the country, especially from the west and from the border States, where the desolations of war with the rebels and the Indians had destroyed the crops of the preceding year, gave me an early and loud warning that it would be no light labor to comply with that part of the act requiring me "to procure and distribute new and valuable seeds."

Pursuing what I regarded as the most judicious and satisfactory course, I imported from England, France, Belgium, Russia, Sweden, and other foreign countries, several hundred bushels of choice wheat and other cereal grains, and several thousand dollars' worth of the most valuable seeds for field and garden culture, including a large collection of such flower seeds as were deemed suitable for our country. These, with an assortment of the choicest varieties of the most desirable grains and vegetables grown in our own country, were spread over the country with a lavish hand.

In addition to these, about fifteen hundred bushels of cotton seed were procured, packed, and distributed mainly among the farmers of the west. There was, too, a very great demand made upon the department for tobacco seed, which was not readily found in many parts of the country, but which, fortunately, I was prepared to supply, and by which the wealth of our country was increased millions of dollars.

Isaac Newton continued as Commissioner of Agriculture until June 19,

James M. Swank, The Department of Agriculture; Its History and Objects (Washington, 1872); Francis G. Caffey, A Brief Statutory History of the Department of Agriculture (Washington, 1907); and Robert H. Cory, Jr., The United States Department of Agriculture; a History of Its Establishment, Growth, and Accomplishments Prior to Its Incorporation Into the Cabinet in 1889

(New Haven, Conn., 1936).

The annual reports of the Superintendent of Agricultural Affairs to the Commissioner of Patents in the period immediately preceding the war should be consulted, especially that for 1860 (H. Ex. Doc. 48, 36 Cong., 2 sess., Serial 1099). Printed as House documents, the four wartime annual reports of the Commissioner of Agriculture were:

1862. H. Ex. Doc. 78, 37 Cong., 3 sess., Serial 1168.

1863. H. Ex. Docs.1 and 91, 38 Cong., 1 sess., Serials 1184 and 1196. 1864. H. Ex. Doc. 68, 38 Cong., 2 sess., Serial 1228.

1865. H. Ex. Doc. 136, 39 Cong., 1 sess., Serial 1266.

Record Groups 16, 97. --The extant records of the Department for the Civil War period are negligible. They comprise only the oaths of office of Commissioner Newton's assistants, named above (Record Group 16), and a letter book of the chemist (Record Group 97). The latter contains copies of letters received by Commissioner Newton and Chemist Wetherill, 186263, requesting the chemical analysis of sorghum, molasses, cane sugar, wine, minerals, and soils; and copies of reports of chemical analyses, 1864-67, by Chemist Erni and his postwar successor.

Among records of the Meteorological Division of the Smithsonian Institution (Record Group 27) are several letters, 1863-67, addressed to the Commissioner of Agriculture but sent to the Smithsonian because they dealt mainly with meteorology.

Letters received in the Interior Department from the Commissioner of Agriculture during the Civil War are in the files of the Patents and Miscellaneous Division, Office of the Secretary of the Interior (Record Group 48).

COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE FLAX AND HEMP

By an act of Feb. 25, 1863 (12 Stat. 691), Congress appropriated $20,000 for "investigations to test the practicability of cultivating and preparing flax and hemp, as a substitute for cotton," and Commissioner of Agriculture Isaac Newton proceeded to carry out these investigations as soon as the appropriation became available. He found that the people of the Middle and Western States especially "did not confine the meaning of the appropriating clause merely to the preparation of flax for cotton machinery, but took the broader view concerning the cultivation and preparation of flax generally, and with reason, growing, as they do, nearly all the flax in the country." To put the investigation "beyond all reasonable complaint or suspicion of partiality," Newton appointed as a commission to undertake the investigation three private citizens: J. K. Moorhead of Pittsburgh, William M. Bailey of Providence, and J. M. Warder of Cincinnati. (In 1864 Charles Jackson of Providence replaced Bailey on the Commission.)

The Commission met in Washington soon after its appointment and adjourned after passing a resolution that the Commissioner of Agriculture should call upon manufacturers and experimenters to send to the Department,

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by Nov. 20, 1863, "samples of the fibres and fabrics prepared by them, to be accompanied, in all cases, by precise statements as to the various processes, and with estimates as to the probable expense per pound of the preparation of the material, and of the proportion of fibre that may be produced from given quantity of the stalks or straw of flax and hemp." The Commission resumed its inquiry in Dec. 1863 and on Feb. 27, 1865, submitted Serial its report, which was printed as S. Ex. Doc. 35, 38 Cong., 2 sess., 1209. The report was predicated on the assumption that Congress had intended to encourage the preparation of what was called familiarly "flaxcotton" because of "the fact that many of the extensive manufactories of our country were standing idle, in consequence of the scarcity of the product of the cotton fields, caused by the desolation of the rebellion in the southern States." No records of the Commission as such have been found, but the original of its report is in the files of the U. S. Senate, Record Group 46 (38A-G10).