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In Numbers We Trust? A History of the US Department of Agriculture and its Agricultural Surveys during the 1920s

Une histoire de l’US Department of Agriculture à travers ses nombres : les enquêtes agricoles aux États-Unis dans les années 1920
Hannah Tyler
p. 39-64

Résumés

Depuis le xixe siècle, les gouvernements utilisent des recensements comme outils de collecte de données pour observer le cours des marchés. Dans les années 1920, les enquêtes viennent compléter ces outils pour faciliter la collecte de données agricoles, amorçant une révolution dans ce secteur. Le ministère de l’Agriculture des États-Unis (USDA) est l’une des institutions à la pointe dans l’usage de ces méthodes. À partir de 1862, il devient le plus important collecteur de données et diffuseur de statistiques agricoles au monde, informant les agriculteurs, les entreprises et les institutions scientifiques états-uniennes, entre autres. Cet article explore la première décennie d’existence de l’USDA et son évolution en un centre d’échange de statistiques. L’objectif est de mettre en évidence la manière dont l’USDA a collecté des statistiques étrangères et utilisé des enquêtes pour générer les estimations des marchés étrangers.

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Texte intégral

  • 1 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1952, p. 374.
  • 2 C. Boryan et al., 2011.

1Over the last two centuries, US agricultural quantification has undergone a remarkable evolution. US congressmen without statistical expertise designed the paper questionnaires of the first agricultural census in 1840.1 Today, thousands of statisticians from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its National Statistics Service (NASS) compile figures on US agricultural production using satellites and geospatial data programs.2

  • 3 G. L. Baker et al., 1963, pp. 107-125; B. E. Baker & B. Hahn, 2016; J. I. Levy, 2006; J. E. Boyle, (...)

2Among scholars, the change from paper to satellites, and from politicians to scientists, has gone unnoticed despite its importance for managing the American agricultural economy. Since 1840, officials and farm lobbyists have used the census to benchmark and debate about how to best optimize the nation’s agricultural production. Similarly, local, state and federal agricultural statistics have been at the front and center of commercial farming activities. Since the first establishment of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1862, American farmers, traders, shippers, speculators, and commodity exchanges have used its data to determine the best course of action for their businesses. In 1923, when the USDA introduced its agricultural outlook, the commercial use of USDA price forecasts and foreign production statistics increased even further because of the Interwar agricultural depression. Many commercial farmers utilized the USDA data to plan which products they want to grow and to determine when and where to sell so that they could increase their income at a time of overproduction. Future speculators also utilized the USDA price and production forecast statistics to turn a profit at the trading pit in Chicago, New York, and New Orleans.3

  • 4 National Archives Record Administration (now NARA), Records of Bureau of Agricultural Economics, B (...)

3The launch of the USDA’s outlook was, in many ways new. Its most important invention was its dedicated sections on both foreign production and international price forecasts. To predict the latter, officials in Washington established one of the largest bureaucratic structures at in the world at that time – the USDA Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE). Its various subsections analyzed thousands of pages and performed surveys in foreign countries to determine both the development of future prices and the competitiveness of US products.4 The BAE data collection machinery reached its first peak with institutionalization of the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service in 1929 and continued to grow with the New Deal Agricultural Adjustment Programs and the Second World War. By the end of 1945, the BAE had become one of the world’s largest clearing houses for foreign agricultural market data – a status which the USDA has maintained to this day.

  • 5 United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 1928; L. S. Tenny, 1947.

4In the early days, the standing of the USDA as an international clearing house, as it appears in the New Deal or after 1945, was by no means secure. In 1928, the USDA forecast for the world’s carry-over of cotton and its correlating international cotton price for 1926 came under fire during a Senate investigation. Southern House Democrats representing the interests of southern commercial cotton producers accused the BAE’s main division for foreign statistics, the Statistical and Historical Research Division (S & H Research Division) of disrupting trading with false carry-over and price forecast data.5 The democrats, backed by private statisticians from the New Orleans Cotton exchange, convinced the public that the USDA’s prediction of 1926 for the carry-over and its successive cotton price had caused speculators to sell their contracts earlier and at lower prices. Ignoring the fact that the price drop was caused by the collision of American overproduction with a large world carry-over, democrats successfully put their power in Congress to use. As of 1929, the USDA had to stop publishing cotton price forecasts – a prohibition that lasted well into the 1940s.

5This episode is a good example of why it is important to explore the politics behind the American collection of foreign agricultural data in the Interwar period. The debates about who should collect and publish cotton market data are essential to the study of global markets because they record the behavior of American market participants. In the Senate investigation, the cotton producers’ alliance and the New Orleans cotton exchange managed to reduce the influence of the USDA on the cotton market with the help of their political representatives. For scholars seeking to understand how American actors were operating on global agricultural markets, the USDA archives are one of the best places to look. Even now, they hold many treasures covered in dust and cobwebs.

  • 6 E. W. Hawley, 1990; T. M. Porter, 1996.
  • 7 D. E. Hamilton, 1990; E. Sanders, 1999; M. Prasad, 2012; É. Chancellier, 2014; J. Gilbert, 2016.
  • 8 L. S. Tenny, 1947; H. C. McDean, 1983.
  • 9 E. Didier, 2020, p. 4.

6Few experts have dealt with the history of USDA and its statistics. Theodor Porter and Ellis W. Hawley interrogated its political motives, finding that the USDA used its statistics to legitimize its standing as a federal organization to Congress and the public.6 Hamilton and Gilbert explain how the USDA utilized statistics for state-building and to defend grassroots democracy, while Prasad and Sanders connect the USDA interwar work to the rise of agrarian statism.7 Didier elaborates on the shift from crop reporters to random sampling, arguing that the USDA introduced random sampling because it allowed the agency to calculate the averages necessary to design and implement New Deal policy.8 The USDA Master Sample enabled the New Deal administration to statistically map “America as a whole”9 in order to plan and carry out the local programs of the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment legislation.

  • 10 E. Brooks, 1977; T. Delcey & G. Noblet, 2021.

7This body of literature provides an excellent starting point for this micro-institutional history of USDA foreign data collection. First, it illustrates the connections between US agricultural statistics, science, and policy, and second, it highlights the knowledge gap on the USDA’s international statistics. Didier’s case, for example, is limited to the USDA’s national work and does not explain why the USDA became one of the largest international agricultural-statistical clearing houses in the 1920s. With the exception of Noblet and Delcey, this subject has rarely been studied and there are no answers on why the USDA sourced its data abroad in the 1920s.10

  • 11 N. Mignemi, 2016; id., 2017; F. D’Onofrio, 2017; J. Pan-Montojo & N. Mignemi, 2017.

8This study is one of two attempts to close the knowledge gap on this crucial topic. The first is the contribution of Federico D’Onofrio and Niccolò Mignemi in which the authors investigated the role of delegates from the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) at the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA).11 This article is a similar attempt to link US agricultural policy with its data gathering. It complements the story about Americans working in the IIA because it captures the origins of the FAS predecessors, the S & H Research Division of the USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics. This subdivision, its officials and collaborators, are the players in this paper. Their work in the 1920s laid the foundation for the contemporary international data collection network of the USDA. Spanning all continents, this network has been informing and influencing many American market participants operating as global exporters in the international agricultural economy since its first formation in the 1920s.

  • 12 M. Prasad, 2012; United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 1928, p.  (...)
  • 13 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924, Memoran (...)

9The paper is divided into three sections. The first seeks to understand why the USDA began its systematic collection of foreign market data in the 1920s. It argues that domestic agricultural abundance and low global prices caused the USDA to extend its work in foreign agrarian statistics to facilitate its “orderly production and marketing” campaigns.12 The second section provides a micro-institutional history of the USDA’s efforts to build the statistical apparatus, manpower and expertise required to collect the foreign data it wanted. Using extensive USDA archival sources, it records the trajectories of the first foreign agricultural attachés and the struggles they faced. The final section is dedicated to contextualizing the USDA work as part of a national movement. It demonstrates that numerous American institutions collaborated with the USDA and sought to gather foreign statistical data themselves. The key takeaway of the article is that the USDA became the “foreign eyes of American farmers”13 as well as one of the world’s first and largest clearing houses by participating in a larger “multiverse” of American institutions because the US was a global seller.

1. US agricultural policy and the lack of reliable foreign data – an old problem

  • 14 C. Postel, 2007.
  • 15 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924, List of (...)

10The central reason why the USDA and other American actors were interested in generating foreign data originated from the country’s market position as a global exporter of agricultural products, and hence its vulnerability to international price drops. It is no coincidence that the USDA’s first collection of foreign statistics took place in 1894, doubtless in response to the same kind of political pressure from the American farm lobby that was behind the formation of the Populist movement and its official party.14 This mission to gather information on how to the “demands of foreign markets for the agricultural products of the United States”15 may be interpreted as a possible attempt to address the Populists’ demand for more governmental support for farmers by providing them with information on missed marketing and sales opportunities for the increasing amount of American surplus production.

  • 16 United States Department of Agriculture Statistical Reporting Service, 1969, p. 48.
  • 17 United States Department of Agriculture Statistical Reporting Service, 1969, pp. 61-64.

11This first experiment to use foreign market data to give American farmers a competitive edge for product exports was further developed over the following decades. Between 1905 and 1930, the USDA statistical offices enjoyed a unique “period of growth”,16 triggered by two events: the outbreak and the end of the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918, as the European continent was consumed by war, American farmers became the main Allied food supplier. The farmers’ governmental agency – the USDA – adapted its bureaucracy to maintain and increase US production in accordance with the Allied need for food. For wheat crops, this co-evolution of American farm exports and US agricultural bureaucracy is visible in a tripling of the number of monthly crops surveys from 10 to 29 by the USDA Bureau of Crop Estimates to keep track of the national wheat production programs.17

  • 18 C. von Dietze, 1967, p. 61; F. Strauss & L. H. Bean, 1940.
  • 19 C. von Dietze, 1967, p. 61.
  • 20 C. P. Kindleberger, 2015 [1984], p. 346 f.

12The signing of the Versailles Treaty in 1918 was a more important milestone of how the US position as an agricultural exporter co-constructed its large number of foreign statistics in the 1920s. As in the 1890s, the great agricultural financial depression of the 1920s placed the USDA under immense political pressure. It commenced in 1919, when the global prices for American surplus of wheat, cotton, and milk fell by more than 20 percent, tanking US farm income.18 The reasons for this downward spiral of prices were the global abundance of supply and the lack of demand. The end of the war saw the re-emergence of secure trading routes and global markets and the return of many of the US export competitors, like Russia, onto the world market.19 Furthermore, former buyers like France and the UK were in financial disarray and could no longer buy large quantities from American suppliers as they had done during the war.20

  • 21 R. Stewart, 1929; G. A. Slichter, 1956; J. T. Bonnen & D. B. Schweikhardt, 1998.
  • 22 P. G. O’Brien, 1973; J. M. Hansen, 1991.
  • 23 E. Mordecai, 1966.
  • 24 L. S. Tenny, 1947; C. C. Jones, 1958.
  • 25 H. C. McDean, 1983.
  • 26 K. H. Parsons, 1991.

13In US domestic politics, the post-war price decreases were known as the “farm problem”21 since farmers were producing more than their grandparents yet earning less due to technological and biological advances. Facing intense political pressure from the farming community and political representatives in Congress, USDA officials were acutely aware of this farm problem. In 1921, the three years of agricultural depression had led to the emergence of a bipartisan group of senators who came together in the “farm bloc” to force the republican President Harding and his first Secretary of Agriculture, Henry C. Wallace into supporting federal price programs.22 Wallace, a supporter of the bloc, was torn between the pressure of the farm bloc and Harding’s opposition to federal price subsidies. He looked for another way to help farmers that didn’t involve a price support program. The solution came in the form of the USDA statistical work. Although Wallace and the USDA could not give farmers any money, they could at least help them make smarter decisions for planting crops and marketing their products on the world market.23 It was in this context that Wallace launched the USDA reorganization in 1920, placing Henry Charles Taylor (1873-1969) in charge.24 Taylor, the charismatic leader of the USDA’s Office of Farm Management, centralized the USDA’s extensive bureaucracy under the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE).25 As of 1922, all USDA branches reported to the BAE and Taylor, who remained Chief until 1925 when he was fired by Wallace’s successor, William Marion Jardin, for backing the price support program of the McNary-Haugen bill.26

  • 27 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1952.
  • 28 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1952.

14The USDA’s agricultural statistical organization was geared towards two campaigns – both attempting to solve the farm problem – the “orderly production”27 and the “orderly marketing”28 campaigns.

  • 29 H. R. Tolley, 1931; A. B. W. Effland, 1999.

15Orderly production was a concept that centered on the idea that American farmers could solve the farm problem by eliminating the American surplus flooding global markets. To do this, farmers needed to be informed about how far to reduce their acreages. The USDA sprang into action in 1923 by launching its first federal information campaign with the help of its “National Outlook”.29 Although the Outlook was immensely popular among its readers, the campaign had little success. In 1925, the USDA Outlook issued a recommendation to American cotton farmers to reduce their acreages by one-third. This would reduce the domestic surplus sufficiently to counteract the low prices resulting from the forecasted global carry-over of cotton in 1926. Unfortunately, the cotton farmers ignored the USDA warning of 1925 and instead planted more than one million new acres, hoping to increase their individual income by selling more. Their hopes were crushed when, in 1926, the largest American cotton harvest coincided with the world’s largest carry-over of American cotton and drove prices to the all-time low of 18 cents per bushel – just as the USDA had predicted in 1925.

16The second campaign was the USDA orderly marketing campaign. It was focused on improving foreign sales and advocated the idea that American farmers could increase their income by exporting more. To this end, the USDA took on the mission of identifying missed potential market opportunities. It was for this reason that the S & H Research Division of the BAE was established within the USDA. Its job was:

  • 30 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, untitled r (...)

“collecting and disseminating to American producers, importers, exporters, and other interested persons information relative to the world supply and need for American agricultural products, marketing methods, conditions, prices, and other factors, a knowledge of which is necessary to the advantageous disposition of such products in foreign countries, independently and in cooperation with other branches of the Government, State Agencies, purchasing and consuming organizations, and persons engaged in the transportation, marketing and distribution of farm and food products.”30

Getting this information was easier said than done. Unlike today, the USDA did not have any satellites to generate the information needed to give good marketing advice to American farmers. Instead, officials wanting to ensure the success of their orderly marketing campaign were faced two choices in 1919: rely on pre-existing international clearing houses like the IIA, or set up their own USDA data collection network.

  • 31 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, Col (...)

17The first option was quickly excluded due to the struggles faced by the first US agricultural commissioner. In 1919, Edward Foley, the US agricultural commissioner in London, sent letters to Taylor reporting the numerous difficulties in promoting American bacon.31 Despite being cheaper than the European competition, Foley’s assistant Orlando J. Worth remembers that his boss failed to convince British consumers to buy American bacon because the British considered it unsuitable for breakfast. To address this issue, Foley even suggested investigating how American bacon might best be used in British cuisine. Unfortunately for the American officials in Washington, price and quality information on European bacon competition was limited in the 1920s. Although the IIA had been collecting statistics since the 1900s, its data did not provide Foley with any material that he could use to reduce European bacon sales. Foley and other USDA staff members officially mentioned this issue in a report in 1923, in which they complained that the IIA’s numbers were unhelpful for their work, saying that although:

  • 32 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, undated re (...)

“the International Institute performs a critical function in the impartial collection and dissemination of official data emanating from the various governments, it still necessarily leaves undone much work relating specifically to American problems.”32

  • 33 A. Hobson, 1930, p. 67.
  • 34 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923.

The IIA’s statistics were problematic for various reasons. They lacked the American level of standardization, and their weight and size measurements, harvest and planting schedules were too different from the American ones.33 This difference made comparison difficult, and it prevented the USDA officials from making proper calculations about foreign production and international price forecasts that were needed to execute the orderly marketing campaigns. At that time, expanding the US agricultural surplus trade was, at least in the eyes of the USDA, one of the most effective solutions to America’s farm income problems.34 Yet their ability to facilitate this expansion was limited by the IIA’s inability to provide the much-needed numbers. Papers of the BAE show that USDA, and especially, Taylor, were unwilling to remain in this vulnerable position. If the IIA data was not good enough to help American farmers sell their products, then the BAE would have to generate their foreign agricultural statistics. The first step was to set up a specific division within the BAE in charge of gathering foreign agricultural data and promoting US agricultural products abroad.

2. The center of US foreign agricultural statistics: the S & H Research Division

  • 35 T. Delcey & G. Noblet, 2021.
  • 36 B. E. Baker & B. Hahn, 2016; United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestr (...)

18Looking at the administrative micro-history of the USDA’s foreign agricultural statistics provides new insights on the knowledge asymmetry that existed between US farmers and other market participants at the beginning of the 1920s.35 Unlike the cotton exchanges in New Orleans, cotton farmers in rural South Carolina had little information about the global carry-over of American cotton stored in foreign warehouses.36 For farmers, having this information was essential as it determined how much cotton foreign buyers imported from the US, and influenced market prices. This affected farmers’ decisions on how much cotton to plant. Prior to 1923, there was no official federal information and organizations like the cotton exchanges privately collected and shared their statistics only with registered paying members of the boards.

  • 37 Wisconsin Historical Society, Personal Papers of H. C. Taylor, 1924; NARA, Bureau of Agricultural (...)
  • 38 Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, 1924.

19It was this gap that the USDA stepped into, making it one of the most effective players in international agricultural markets. As well as using statistics to offer advice on what and how much to plant, the USDA launched its data collection and orderly marketing campaign with the intent to promote US products via international trade agreements. Between 1923-1924 the USDA’s global cotton data, for instance, was used by none other than Taylor himself to lobby for the implementation of the American cotton grading system within the Universal Cotton Standard.37 During his negotiations, Taylor utilized the USDA’s inside knowledge on the world cotton trade to forge an alliance with continental trading organizations that would break the resistance of British traders in Liverpool. Taylor convinced German traders in Bremerhaven to support the US by showing them USDA estimates on future cotton trading for Germany and the US. When Taylor arrived in Liverpool to meet the British merchants who refused to sign the agreement, Taylor and his European allies threatened financial consequences if the British did not give in.38

  • 39 I. Hacking, 1982.
  • 40 A. Mustard, 2003.
  • 41 G. L. Baker et al., 1963, p. 134; NARA, BAE. Box 14. “S & H R. Research-Price analysis”, College P (...)

20Taylor’s negotiating position was made possible by the “avalanche”39 of cotton data at his disposal provided by USDA’s S & H Research Division, the predecessor of the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, founded in 1930, and the Office of Foreign Relations.40 Following the BAE’s inauguration in 1923, Taylor appointed the agricultural economist Oscar C. Stine as head of the division. Stine hired Louis G. Michael as head of the S & H subdivision on “Foreign Competition and Demand”. Its central task was to collect and standardize data on foreign production and market prices so that they could be used to perform a historical timeseries analysis enabling the USDA price division to forecast prices and predict future production.41 Hence why the division was named both “Statistical” and “Historical”. All USDA experts on foreign missions reported to Michael, who forwarded their findings to Stine and Taylor.

  • 42 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-general”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923. List: Employed in (...)
  • 43 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Workers-Walker”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1927; The BAE News: Issue (...)
  • 44 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, Col (...)
  • 45 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925. Shoup received a deg (...)
  • 46 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Bullock”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1921. Bullock had a B.S. (...)
  • 47 NARA, Records of Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1924. BAE Personal file of William A. Schoenfel (...)

21The S & H Research Division handed out temporary assignments, with nearly a dozen BAE officials taking brief trips to gather explicit foreign agricultural information.42 In 1927, the division’s cotton specialist J. C. Walker traveled to New Zealand to collect agricultural data and contact local cotton associations. Upon his return, Walker’s data were used it to calculate New Zealand’s current cotton supply and demand for 1927 and were incorporated in the world supply estimates published in USDA’s 1928 outlook report.43 The S & H Research Division employed at least five permanent agricultural commissioners. These included Edward A. Foley, the UK delegate stationed in London (1919),44 E. C. Shoup in Berlin (1920),45 Dr. Dillman Bullock in Buenos Aires (1921-1923),46 Paul Nyhus in Shanghai (1926) and Cliff Taylor in Pretoria (1930). They reported to Stine, Taylor, and the BAE’s Director of Market Information, William A. Schoenfeld.47

  • 48 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, Col (...)
  • 49 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Telegram Methods of Sending-Foreign”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1921.

22In the first decade, the S & H Research Division faced organizational, legal, and political issues. The agricultural commissioners needed housing and communication tools. For the first ten years of his career, Foley’s office in London was located on the sixth floor of a house rented by the US State Department. Orlando J. Worth remarked its inconvenience as the office was too small and had no elevator.48 Foley and the other commissioners also required access to post and radio services to send their information. For this, the BAE negotiated special rates with the US Department of State and US Naval Radio service.49 These agreements, put into place in 1920, allowed the commissioners to radio prices and other information back to Washington. Worth cabled the prices of American apples sold at London’s Covent Garden Market and other locations every Saturday.

  • 50 NARA, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College (...)
  • 51 A. Hobson, 1930, pp. 61-65.

23The legal challenges faced by the S & H Research division were acute and came from within the government. The biggest competitor was the US Bureau of Domestic and Foreign Commerce. Even though the USDA and Commerce had signed several agreements to exchange information, the USDA’s ambition to take over foreign agricultural trade created friction.50 Tensions ran so high that the Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover himself prevented the USDA from getting its foreign agricultural service. It was Hoover’s friends in the Senate who, between 1923 and 1929, successfully blocked all the bills to create a USDA foreign service, claiming that US foreign agricultural trade fell under the jurisdiction of Commerce.51 Ironically, when the USDA got its Foreign Agricultural Service, it was none other than the former Commerce Secretary, and now soon-to-be President Herbert Hoover, who signed off the bill.

  • 52 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, Report: Ag (...)
  • 53 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Sources of Foreign Statistics, Schoenfeld Reports”, College Park/Washington, DC (...)

24The BAE strategy to collect foreign agricultural statistics also included the establishment of a vast network of foreign data sources. The issue was deciding which sources the S & H Research Division should draw on. The BAE file “Sources of foreign agricultural statistics” consists of a report provided by the BAE official and later German agricultural commissioner William Schoenfeld in 1924. He lists two sets of sources. The first were official statistics published by foreign governments. Schoenfeld reported that the USDA maintained contacts in, and subscribed to, official publications of more than 66 different countries.52 The BAE also signed agreements with countries exchanging their forecasts and estimates via cable. In 1924, the USDA received monthly cables about crop forecasts from Norway, India, and Canada.53

  • 54 NARA, BAE. Box 3. “Foreign Offices-London”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1920.
  • 55 US Consular Service foreign activities and a list of its agricultural reports, American Consular B (...)
  • 56 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Schoenfeld”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924.
  • 57 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Letter to Dr. O. C.  (...)
  • 58 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, Col (...)

25The second group were “unofficial sources” from non-governmental institutions. These ranged from sugar associations in Czechoslovakia to the confidential reports from the State Department, Commerce and the BAE commissioners.54 In 1924, a total over 500 consulate reports were provided on crop production and estimates, etc.55 The US Commerce Department also shared its trade, import and export statistics, packing and shipping regulations, and even established cable services with the USDA. In 1923, the USDA and Commerce launched the joint “Sicilian lemon cable exchange program”56 that provided the USDA with daily cables on the citrus fruit shipments that arrived and left Palermo and the prices for which they were traded. This information was sent from the American consulate in Italy to Washington, where it was redirected to California to the various American citrus fruit exchanges and associations.57 The BAE data collection network included the permanent offices of the S & H Research Division in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Between 1919 and 1930, the agricultural commissioners developed regular reporting schedules for their office, depending on the agricultural products sold in the countries under their jurisdiction. In London, the information on the American apple and bacon trade was a key topic, while livestock numbers were cabled in regularly from Argentina.58

  • 59 NARA, BAE. Box 14. “S & H R. Research-General” College Park/Washington, DC, 1927, Letter to Mr. Ta (...)
  • 60 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, Report: Ag (...)
  • 61 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923.

26As its name suggests, the S & H Research Division did not simply collect data. It also performed historical timeseries analysis to forecast prices and launched its own investigations into foreign agricultural production. Between 1920 and 1929, it conducted various surveys to collect information to interpret “current information concerning foreign […] production and demand for agricultural products”.59 These surveys targeted the three components of the world agricultural market: supply, demand, and competition. The most significant example of the first area was the S & H Research Division’s World Agricultural Supply Survey (WASS).60 The fieldwork was executed by Louis Michael, head of the Foreign Market and Competition division in the S & H Research Division, and Asher Hobson, the American delegate to the IIA. The survey was composed of various case studies. As the principal investigator, Michael began his studies in Latin America (Peru, Argentina, and Chile) before moving on to Eastern Europe (Hungary and the Danube Basin) between 1923 and 1927. Asher Hobson, who joined during the off-season of the IIA in summer, traveled to Spain and France to interview American consuls, talk to businesspeople, and visit farms. In 1929, the WASS was completed, and its findings were published in the USDA’s Foreign Crops and Markets. Founded in 1922, this journal was part of the USDA’s effort to disseminate foreign market information to American farmers and businesses.61 The survey work of Hobson and Michael in these years allowed US statisticians to construct the supply side of the global world agricultural market, enabling USDA officials to achieve two objectives.

  • 62 A. Ribi Forclaz, 2016, p. 54.
  • 63 J. W. White, 1924.

27First, with regard to global supply, these statistics enabled the USDA to determine the production of countries that threatened the US in markets such as livestock and cotton. Michael’s work and Bullock’s cooperation on the Argentinian case study provided a way for the USDA to know how much meat the country produced, especially when the Argentinian government had trouble meeting its demand. The Argentinians’ problems were so severe that the government asked the USDA for help reforming its crop and livestock reporting program in 1923. The USDA answered this call for assistance with the deployment of Leon Estabrook, the future director of the IIA’s world agricultural census.62 Estabrook helped the Argentinian government reorganize its Bureau of Rural Statistics, improve its forecasting, and introduce US survey and estimation techniques to conduct its agricultural investigations.63

  • 64 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923.

28For the second objective, global demand, the USDA made inquiries through yet another approach, the gathering and statistical analysis of IIA reports and government statistics. To determine the annual demand of a country for a specific product, the S & H Research Division primarily relied on the import/export statistics of the US Department of Commerce. American diplomatic corps trade experts sent the required information to their USDA collaborators under the codename “Agrecon”.64

  • 65 Wisconsin Historical Society, Personal Papers of Henry C. Taylor, “US BAE-European Tour-1924”, Mad (...)
  • 66 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon (...)

29Finally, the USDA launched several competitive surveys to examine why other states outperformed US farmers on international markets. In 1924, Henry C. Taylor conducted an “observation survey” during his European trip to meet with the Liverpool merchants.65 Traveling to Europe, Taylor stopped in Denmark to visit several Danish farms that were competing with the US in dairy and livestock production and to observe their work on the ground.66 This trip aligned with the S & H Research Division’s data collection goals. Since 1921, the division had defined its central mission as collecting agricultural data that would improve its interpretation abilities. Taylor’s and Shoup’s visit aimed to understand Danish farming and enhance their understanding of Danish farm data so that they could improve the USDA’s data gathering on Danish production. Going directly to the farms, they investigated the ultimate source of Danish agricultural statistics that the S & H Research Division used to calculate Danish agricultural supply. At the same time, they gained insights into the farming and production techniques used in Denmark. This was important as the Danish were one of the United States’ central competitors in dairy products and livestock.

  • 67 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Swanson”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1930.

30The second case of this generation of qualitative data for interpretation was the flour and milling project spearheaded by Swanson, a foreign marketing specialist with S & H Research Division. Between 1929-1930, Swanson investigated the UK, France, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and Switzerland to determine “the factors influencing the competition which American wheat and flours meet in the European market”.67 His scope included the type and quality of wheat in competition with American wheat and flour; mixing, blending, and milling practices which had a bearing upon the proportion of different types and qualities of wheat used in mill mixes; baking practices and preferences which influenced the character of the flour conforming to bakers’ requirements. He studied the influence of government regulations upon these various operations. Swanson’s work went beyond a simple excursion. His trip was designed to collect information about US competition in the European wheat market. This data was then used to tailor American wheat to meet the specifications of the European market. Swanson’s file provides insights into the efforts the USDA was willing to make to improve American market standing. The USDA asked him to bring samples of competitive products to the USDA’s milling and baking laboratory for analysis. This laboratory was designed to improve American wheat production and analyze foreign samples. The file indicates the importance of European wheat prices. These were collected so that the BAE could analyze the “price-quality relationship” of their European competitors. Swanson’s investigation is a clear example of how the BAE foreign agricultural workers designed, planned, and executed a program that enabled them to outdo the competition. By studying European competition, both the samples and price statistics, Swanson’s project allowed the BAE to identify, monitor, evaluate its competition, and adapt American wheat production and marketing accordingly. Swanson’s case is one example of how the S & H Research Division tailored its data collection efforts to its international marketing work.

3. The USDA partners in foreign agricultural statistics

31In the 1920s, the collection of foreign data was not limited to the USDA. Other parties were working parallel to and collaborating with the USDA because they shared a similar interest in improving American farm income during the depression. At one end of the spectrum were American businesses, and at the other were governmental institutions. While the first kind collected foreign data to improve their business activities, the second assembled them for US trade policies. Located in between were American philanthropical ventures and universities. What united these organizations was their common cause to provide US farmers and commodity markets with estimates about foreign agricultural production and price data. In the 1920s, the agricultural data collected by this group found its way to farms and traders through either USDA, academic, or private publications.

The governmental group: the State Department and the Bureau of Domestic and Foreign Commerce

  • 68 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Sources of Foreign Statistics, Schoenfeld Reports”, College Park/Washington, DC (...)
  • 69 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon (...)
  • 70 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon (...)
  • 71 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon (...)

32Hoover’s Bureau of Domestic and Foreign Commerce and the US State Department were the two crucial collaborators of the USDA. The first allowed the USDA access to its network of foreign commercial and trade attachés. In the 1920s, the S & H Research Division got agricultural, and trading reports from more than 40 members of the Bureau of Domestic and Foreign Commerce.68 These reports included farm product import and export numbers and reports on trading, agricultural legislation, and practices. This relationship was filled with competition and tension. In 1923, USDA officials became so dissatisfied with the information provided by the commercial attachés that Taylor sent the USDA agricultural commissioner Eldon C. Shoup on a European tour to evaluate the ability of the European commercial attachés to provide adequate market intelligence.69 Shoup reported his findings, stating that most of the men he met in France and Spain were moderately capable and willing to work with the USDA.70 The US commercial attaché in Paris was happy to make his office the “clearing house”71 for all American agricultural statistics. The only exception was the Spanish trade commissioner in Madrid, who was neither interested in the topic of agriculture, nor willing to engage with the USDA.

The external collaborators: businesses, philanthropies, and universities

33Beyond the government, the USDA worked with three forms of external collaborators: American businesses, philanthropical ventures and universities.

The foreign agricultural statistics of American agri-businesses

  • 72 A. Hobson, 1932.
  • 73 A. Ribi Forclaz, 2016; F. D’Onofrio, 2017.

34In the business group, foreign data collection took place on both individual and institutional levels. The most prominent example of an American businessman was the Polish American David Lubin. Born in 1849, he became a dry goods merchant in 1874 before turning his interest toward farming and the issue of agricultural data collection.72 Believing in the international collaboration of farmers and the need for internationally standardized data, Lubin was responsible for founding the IIA in Rome in 1905. Between 1905 and 1945, the IIA became the first and most important international institution to generate global agricultural statistics during the Interwar period. From 1920 to 1930, the FAO predecessor launched several initiatives to collect government statistics and establish a world agricultural census.73

  • 74 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”. Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup, 1925. Letter to Dr. O. C. (...)
  • 75 J. G. Knapp, 1926; J. J. Keeling, C. A. Carter & R. J. Sexton, 2004.
  • 76 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”. Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup, 1925, Letter to Dr. O. C. (...)

35Foreign market research was an integral part of the work of American agricultural business organizations. In 1926, when the USDA’s Foreign Market Subdivision finalized its plans to open an office in Shanghai, it consulted business leaders. The USDA’s agricultural commissioner to Germany, E. C. Shoup, and the soon-to-be US agricultural commissioner to China, Paul Nyhus, interviewed American agricultural associations, trade companies, chambers of commerce and agricultural exchanges. In Los Angeles, Shoup and Nyhus met with the foreign agricultural statistical data collector of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, who was working part-time for the US Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.74 They spoke with the manager of one of the biggest rice trading agencies, the California Rice Growers Association, an agricultural cooperative, led by Ernest L. Adams.75 Adams told Shoup and Nyhus that he currently paid Japanese firms to get the information on the Japanese and Chinese rice markets that he needed to sell his surplus since there were no detailed rice statistics.76 When asked whether he would support the opening of an USDA office in Asia, Adams responded enthusiastically, saying that he would support Nyhus in China since this would hopefully provide him with better data that he could use to position his surplus of Californian rice crops on Japanese and Chinese markets.

The foreign agricultural statistics of American foundations

  • 77 R. E. Kohler, 1985.
  • 78 Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, Correspondence-Carnegie Institute, 1905-1920. Land ten (...)
  • 79 J. H. Madison, 1984; I. G. Davis, 1936.
  • 80 Rockefeller Foundation Archive, International Education Board, IEB.S1.SS1.B13. 1926; Rockefeller F (...)

36The second group were American foundations. These organizations had a long track record in the field of agricultural statistics.77 In the 1900s, the Carnegie endowment financed the land tenure work of Henry Taylor.78 The experience of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) in agriculture was extensive. In the 1920s, the RF funded many US scholars in agricultural economics through fellowships and grants.79 It financed the European travels of two New Deal figures, John D. Black and William I. Myers. It sponsored the Social Science Research Council’s work to standardize American agricultural economics and financed Richard Ely’s Institute for Land Economics and Public Utilities at the University of Wisconsin.80

  • 81 Wisconsin Historical Society, A. Hobson, 1924; Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, 1934.
  • 82 A. Ribi Forclaz, 2016.
  • 83 Wisconsin Historical Society, Personal Papers of Asher Hobson, “Agricultural Economics in Europe ( (...)
  • 84 K. H. Parsons, 1991; R. S. Kirkendall, 1980.
  • 85 Wisconsin Historical Society, A. Hobson, A. R. Mann, 1925.
  • 86 Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, 1952, The Rockefeller Foundation saved my career.

37The RF had an extensive joint-venture project with the USDA and its S & H Research division. Founded in 1923, the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Education Board (IEB), became a collaborator and a sponsor of the S & H Research Division’s work. The IEB financed the political and academic work of the IIA delegates Leon Estabrook, Asher Hobson and Henry C. Taylor.81 It provided the funding for the IIA’s first World Census in 1930.82 It paid Asher Hobson, the permanent US delegate to the IIA in the 1920s, to conduct several investigations during the off-season of the IIA. In 1927, the IEB paid Hobson to make a European agricultural economic education survey to identify the best teaching centers in Europe and to identify how their knowledge could be used to improve American universities.83 As Hobson was still officially employed by both the USDA and the State Department, his IEB report went to Washington. The IEB’s work with the IIA intensified with the arrival of the former BAE chief Taylor in 1934. Having been fired from the BAE in 1925, he was paid by the IEB in 1934 to conduct a large book project on the status of world agriculture.84 Taylor’s connections with the RF were Beardsley Ruml, the head of the RF Social Science Division and A. R. Mann, the former director of Cornell University and IEB officer.85 Taylor wrote in his diary that these RF ties saved his career.86 Generally, the connection between the IEB, the IIA, and the USDA is central to the history of US foreign market statistics. It not only facilitated agricultural statistical projects such as the census, but the relationships revealed the deep connection between the academic and governmental experts operating in the US during the 1920s.

The foreign agricultural statistics of American universities

  • 87 B. F. Stanton, 2001; International Education Board, 1924.
  • 88 S. W. Warren, 1945.
  • 89 J. L. Buck, 1973.
  • 90 J. L. Buck, 1973, p. 15.

38American universities were the third group involved with the USDA. An example of the international USDA-University work is the Cornell-Nanking Project. In 1920-1921, the agricultural-economic faculty of Cornell University launched its Nanking project with Nanking University using funding from the IEB.87 Here, the American university facilitated an exchange of faculty members and trained students in how to perform the Cornell farm management survey.88 The Cornell-Nanking program ran for more than a decade and was made possible because Cornell had hired USDA personnel. In 1920, John Lossing Buck, a former USDA economist with the BAE, went to China to supervise the program on the ground in Nanking.89 Buck’s statistical work in China was impressive, considering his limited financial resources. Between 1922 and 1925, his Chinese students conducted farm management surveys on more than 2,866 farms in 17 localities in seven provinces.90 Cornell’s and Buck’s data collection work was relevant to the USDA since it provided specific farm data from China, a country where agricultural statistics were hard to come by.

  • 91 P. Brassley et al., 2013.
  • 92 J. R. Raeburn & J. O. Jones, 1990, p. 29.
  • 93 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1974, p. 375.

39Scientific events were another way American universities collaborated with the USDA. In the 1930s, the USDA was happy to hear that the British Ministry of Agriculture had introduced the same Cornell Farm Management survey to collect farm financial data as the one used by the USDA.91 The process that led to this method transfer was kicked off in 1930, when several British ministry members and academics visited Cornell for the second conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). During their stay in Cornell, the British debated with more than 320 agricultural economic experts from over 19 countries on around 72 different topics.92 Among the things they heard were the advantages of the Cornell Method, and from none other than the inventor himself. As a senior member of Cornell and the IIA, George F. Warren hosted the conference to show off his survey work to foreign visitors. In the case of the British, his promotion seems to have worked. For the USDA and its work in foreign agricultural data collection, the British adoption of the method in the 1930s was a blessing. It allowed the USDA to make rapid comparisons, as the British now used the same national farm income survey as that of the USDA to study the financial status of farms. In 1926-1927 “57 out of the 125 research projects in farm management underway in the United States were conducted employing the survey method developed in Cornell”.93

Conclusion and outlook

  • 94 NARA, BAE, Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, Memorandum Oc (...)

40The question of this paper is how global markets, American politics and statistics are connected. The answer is that the USDA constructed its agricultural statistics to shape its activities in foreign agricultural markets and inform other market participants. The case study shows that the USDA monitored foreign agricultural markets relevant to American farmers by gathering information with the help of agricultural commissioners, foreign marketing specialists, and Washington statisticians. Between 1919 and 1929, these experts enabled the USDA to become the “foreign eyes of American farmers”.94 The USDA’s attempt to gather as much global data as it could, historically, turned the USDA into the central institution of foreign farm data in the US, fending off attempts by the commerce department to assume this role.

41Through its extensive efforts to gather foreign agricultural statistics, the USDA became the second-largest clearing house for Interwar world agricultural statistics next to the IIA. Its efforts were equal to those of the IIA. The USDA foreign data collection network may even have outperformed the IIA because the USDA did not only rely on foreign governments to receive accurate statistics. Its other sources allowed it to overcome the lack of IIA standardized statistics. But the USDA did not exclude the IIA as the American IIA delegates worked tirelessly to improve governmental statistics through diplomatic means while forwarding IIA publications to Washington. For the USDA, the IIA was important, but not the pillar of its foreign data collection network.

42Consuls from the US State Department, US trade commissioners of the US Department of Commerce, the information provided by Rockefeller’s International Education Board, and the foreign academic exchange of US universities were all part of the American “multiverse” that shared their sets of statistics with the USDA. As a member of this group, the USDA was involved in most data collection schemes. As demonstrated, the USDA utilized various methods to investigate foreign agriculture. Both Taylor and the USDA agricultural commissioners gathered governmental and agribusiness statistics and conducted agricultural surveys in 1922 and 1924. The USDA pulled out all the political stops. Its collaboration with the consular service of the State Department and the Department of Commerce provided the USDA with extensive amounts of foreign trading and agricultural information. However, in some cases the work of these foreign ambassadors was semi-official and not cleared by the host governments. Despite the issues accompanying the USDA’s foreign data collection, the statistics were justified by the USDA. The USDA staff used their knowledge to construct its version of the world’s agricultural supply and demand and to monitor competition. In sum, the USDA agricultural statistical system went beyond anything the IIA could offer to ensure the competitiveness of American products on international markets and give American farmers an advantage.

43The USDA utilized its resources after the First World War to monitor foreign agricultural supply, demand, and competition. Its statistical knowledge allowed the USDA to increase the foreign trade flows of American products, anticipate those of its competitors, and warn American farmers about developments on foreign markets. It is interesting to note that the USDA, despite its large-scale system, could not predict the effect on American farmers of the Great Depression of 1929. Although the USDA’s foreign agricultural data network had become one of the most sophisticated in the world, it was taken by surprise by the world agricultural crisis that followed the New York stock market crash in October 1929. The political response of the US government and the USDA to these events came in the form of the US Agricultural New Deal.95 Following the global financial breakdown, the US government, led by Franklin D. Roosevelt, launched an extensive program to protect and support American farmers. The vast amount of government funding that reached the USDA during the New Deal found its way into foreign agricultural statistics. Thanks to the powers of the New Deal’s Federal Farm Board, the USDA received the money it needed to launch its Foreign Agricultural Service.96 The Federal Farm Board administrators wanted to get as much information on international agricultural prices as possible. Throughout the 1930s, USDA foreign data collection expanded further with the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1937, which set the first official global marketing campaign of US agricultural products into motion. It provided the funding to enlarge the FAS. With the outbreak of the war, this expansion took on a military turn. In 1938-39, the FAS was placed under the jurisdiction of the State Department to coordinate the assembling of agricultural data for the Second World War, informing officials on food production in Nazi Germany as well as in Allied countries. In 1941, the FAS continued its mandate under a new name, the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations (OFAR).97 In the 1950s, the OFAR returned to the USDA, where it has remained to this day. In hindsight, the tale of the USDA’s foreign agricultural statistics in the 1920s marks the beginning of a bigger adventure. The stories of how US statisticians observed foreign markets after 1945 remains unstudied territory. Uncovering them is the challenge issued to readers.

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Slichter, Gertrude Almy, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Farm Problem, 1929-1932”, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 1956, pp. 238-258.

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Stewart, Robert, “The Farm Problem”, Economic Geography, vol. 5, no. 4, 1929, pp. 358-368.

Strauss, Frederick & Bean, Louis Hyman, Gross Farm Income and Indices of Farm Production and Prices in the United States, 1869-1937, Washington, US Department of Agriculture, 1940.

Taylor, Henry C. & Taylor, Anne Dewees, The Story of Agricultural Economics in the United States, 1840-1932: Men, Services, Ideas, Ames, Iowa State College Press, 1952.

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United States Department of Agriculture Statistical Reporting Service, The Story of US Agricultural Estimates, Washington DC, US Government Printing Office (Miscellaneous Publications, 1088), April 1969.

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Notes

1 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1952, p. 374.

2 C. Boryan et al., 2011.

3 G. L. Baker et al., 1963, pp. 107-125; B. E. Baker & B. Hahn, 2016; J. I. Levy, 2006; J. E. Boyle, 1920; W. G. Ferris, 1988; W. Cronon, 2009 [1991].

4 National Archives Record Administration (now NARA), Records of Bureau of Agricultural Economics, BAE. Box 14. “S & H R. Research-Price Analysis”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1928; F. Strauss & L. H. Bean, 1940; L. S. Tenny, 1947; G. L. Baker et al., 1963; H. C. McDean, 1983.

5 United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 1928; L. S. Tenny, 1947.

6 E. W. Hawley, 1990; T. M. Porter, 1996.

7 D. E. Hamilton, 1990; E. Sanders, 1999; M. Prasad, 2012; É. Chancellier, 2014; J. Gilbert, 2016.

8 L. S. Tenny, 1947; H. C. McDean, 1983.

9 E. Didier, 2020, p. 4.

10 E. Brooks, 1977; T. Delcey & G. Noblet, 2021.

11 N. Mignemi, 2016; id., 2017; F. D’Onofrio, 2017; J. Pan-Montojo & N. Mignemi, 2017.

12 M. Prasad, 2012; United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 1928, p. 1409.

13 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924, Memorandum, October 30, 1924, p. 5.

14 C. Postel, 2007.

15 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924, List of Appropriations made for the collection of Foreign agricultural statistics, Reported from the 53rd Cong. Session, II. Chap. 238.

16 United States Department of Agriculture Statistical Reporting Service, 1969, p. 48.

17 United States Department of Agriculture Statistical Reporting Service, 1969, pp. 61-64.

18 C. von Dietze, 1967, p. 61; F. Strauss & L. H. Bean, 1940.

19 C. von Dietze, 1967, p. 61.

20 C. P. Kindleberger, 2015 [1984], p. 346 f.

21 R. Stewart, 1929; G. A. Slichter, 1956; J. T. Bonnen & D. B. Schweikhardt, 1998.

22 P. G. O’Brien, 1973; J. M. Hansen, 1991.

23 E. Mordecai, 1966.

24 L. S. Tenny, 1947; C. C. Jones, 1958.

25 H. C. McDean, 1983.

26 K. H. Parsons, 1991.

27 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1952.

28 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1952.

29 H. R. Tolley, 1931; A. B. W. Effland, 1999.

30 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, untitled report on USDA foreign work.

31 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, College Park, 1924. Report of Orlando J. Worth: The London Office Established over 40 Years, p. 3.

32 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, undated report: Foreign Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, p. 2.

33 A. Hobson, 1930, p. 67.

34 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923.

35 T. Delcey & G. Noblet, 2021.

36 B. E. Baker & B. Hahn, 2016; United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 1928.

37 Wisconsin Historical Society, Personal Papers of H. C. Taylor, 1924; NARA, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, BAE. Box 3. “Foreign-Cotton Standard”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925.

38 Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, 1924.

39 I. Hacking, 1982.

40 A. Mustard, 2003.

41 G. L. Baker et al., 1963, p. 134; NARA, BAE. Box 14. “S & H R. Research-Price analysis”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1928.

42 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-general”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923. List: Employed in foreign countries.

43 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Workers-Walker”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1927; The BAE News: Issued weekly for the Staff of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, USDA, Washington DC, vol 16, no 7, February 15, 1927, p. 1. Title: Mr Walker to study abroad.

44 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, College Park, 1924. Report of Orlando J. Worth: The London Office Established over 40 Years, pp. 2-3.

45 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925. Shoup received a degree in a college in Kansas and attended Harvard, specializing in marketing work. He was employed for a year in Boston with the New England Research Council. His duties were to keep the USDA updated about the development of agricultural production in Germany and of demand for agricultural products.

46 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Bullock”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1921. Bullock had a B.S. and a M.S. degree from Michigan Agricultural College. In 1923 he oversaw the Agricultural Department of a school in Chile. His duties included reporting on crop conditions. He also collected statistical and other data for use in comparing production costs and other factors of competition in the production of wheat, wool, corn, hogs, and cattle in Argentina for sale both in Europe and the US.

47 NARA, Records of Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1924. BAE Personal file of William A. Schoenfeld. Schoenfeld later joined the USDA commissioners in Europe, holding positions in London and Germany. In 1931, he became the Dean of the School of Agriculture and Director of the Experiment Station at Oregon State College.

48 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, College Park, 1924.

49 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Telegram Methods of Sending-Foreign”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1921.

50 NARA, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924, Paper: Cooperation with the State Department and the Department of Commerce, 8th of November 1926, pp. 1-2.

51 A. Hobson, 1930, pp. 61-65.

52 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, Report: Agricultural Competition and Demand in Foreign Countries, June 31, 1923, p. 1.

53 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Sources of Foreign Statistics, Schoenfeld Reports”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924. Report: Statistics of Foreign Agriculture. Prepared by Miss Thomas for use in the report to the Presidential Agricultural Commission by the BAE on its activities, December 1924.

54 NARA, BAE. Box 3. “Foreign Offices-London”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1920.

55 US Consular Service foreign activities and a list of its agricultural reports, American Consular Bulletin, vol 6, no. 4, April 1924, p. 154.

56 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Schoenfeld”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924.

57 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Letter to Dr. O. C. Stine, Statistical and Historical Research Division of the USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics from E. C. Shoup, Title: Statement of Interview and Observations made on trip through California, Oregon and Washington, December 16, 1926, pp. 1-2.

58 US National Agricultural Library, Personal Papers of Paul Moncure, Moncure.B.2. “More Papers”, College Park, 1924; NARA, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Bullock”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1921.

59 NARA, BAE. Box 14. “S & H R. Research-General” College Park/Washington, DC, 1927, Letter to Mr. Tapp, August 13, 1927.

60 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923, Report: Agricultural Competition and Demand in Foreign Countries, June 31, 1923, pp. 2-3.

61 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923.

62 A. Ribi Forclaz, 2016, p. 54.

63 J. W. White, 1924.

64 NARA, BAE. Box 4. “Foreign Service for Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1923.

65 Wisconsin Historical Society, Personal Papers of Henry C. Taylor, “US BAE-European Tour-1924”, Madison, Wisconsin, 1924.

66 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup; Wisconsin Historical Society, Personal Papers of Henry C. Taylor, “US BAE-European Tour-1924”, Madison, Wisconsin, 1924.

67 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Swanson”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1930.

68 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Sources of Foreign Statistics, Schoenfeld Reports”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1924. Report to the President’s Agricultural Commission by the BAE on its activities, Dec. 1924.

69 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup. Report of visits to the American Consulates at Genoa, Nice, Marseilles, Barcelona, Malaga, Valencia, Madrid, Bordeaux and Paris, March 1925.

70 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup. Report of visits to the American Consulates at Genoa, Nice, Marseilles, Barcelona, Malaga, Valencia, Madrid, Bordeaux and Paris, March 1925, p. 2.

71 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”, College Park/Washington, DC, 1925, Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup. Report of visits to the American Consulates at Genoa, Nice, Marseilles, Barcelona, Malaga, Valencia, Madrid, Bordeaux and Paris, March 1925, p. 3.

72 A. Hobson, 1932.

73 A. Ribi Forclaz, 2016; F. D’Onofrio, 2017.

74 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”. Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup, 1925. Letter to Dr. O. C. Stine, Statistical and Historical Research Division of the USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics from E. C. Shoup, Title: Statement of Interview and Observations made on trip through California, Oregon and Washington, December 16, 1926, p. 3.

75 J. G. Knapp, 1926; J. J. Keeling, C. A. Carter & R. J. Sexton, 2004.

76 NARA, BAE. Box 6. “Foreign workers-Shoup”. Memorandum of Eldon C. Shoup, 1925, Letter to Dr. O. C. Stine, Statistical and Historical Research Division of the USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics from E. C. Shoup, Title: Statement of Interview and Observations made on trip through California, Oregon and Washington, December 16, 1926, p. 7.

77 R. E. Kohler, 1985.

78 Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, Correspondence-Carnegie Institute, 1905-1920. Land tenure research.

79 J. H. Madison, 1984; I. G. Davis, 1936.

80 Rockefeller Foundation Archive, International Education Board, IEB.S1.SS1.B13. 1926; Rockefeller Foundation Archive, International Education Board, IEB.S1.SS1.B12.F226, 1926; Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Social Science Research Council, SSRC.S1.1.SS.19.B154, 1928; Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Social Science Research Council, SSRC.S1.1.B197, 1928; Wisconsin Historical Society, Papers of the Institute for Public Utilities and Land Economics, 1925; G. W. Domhoff, 1996.

81 Wisconsin Historical Society, A. Hobson, 1924; Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, 1934.

82 A. Ribi Forclaz, 2016.

83 Wisconsin Historical Society, Personal Papers of Asher Hobson, “Agricultural Economics in Europe (FI)”, Madison, Wisconsin, 1927.

84 K. H. Parsons, 1991; R. S. Kirkendall, 1980.

85 Wisconsin Historical Society, A. Hobson, A. R. Mann, 1925.

86 Wisconsin Historical Society, H. C. Taylor, 1952, The Rockefeller Foundation saved my career.

87 B. F. Stanton, 2001; International Education Board, 1924.

88 S. W. Warren, 1945.

89 J. L. Buck, 1973.

90 J. L. Buck, 1973, p. 15.

91 P. Brassley et al., 2013.

92 J. R. Raeburn & J. O. Jones, 1990, p. 29.

93 H. C. Taylor & A. D. Taylor, 1974, p. 375.

94 NARA, BAE, Box 6. “Foreign Work-State and Agriculture”, College Park/Washington, DC, Memorandum October 30, 1924, p. 5.

95 J. Gilbert, 2016; K. K. Patel, 2016.

96 A. Hobson, 1930.

97 National Archives, Records of the Foreign Agricultural Service, URL: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/166.html.

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Hannah Tyler, « In Numbers We Trust? A History of the US Department of Agriculture and its Agricultural Surveys during the 1920s »Histoire & mesure, XXXVIII-1 | 2023, 39-64.

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Hannah Tyler, « In Numbers We Trust? A History of the US Department of Agriculture and its Agricultural Surveys during the 1920s »Histoire & mesure [En ligne], XXXVIII-1 | 2023, mis en ligne le 30 juin 2023, consulté le 29 septembre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/histoiremesure/19023 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/histoiremesure.19023

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Hannah Tyler

PhD candidate/SNF doctoral student, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

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