foodstuffs in crude condition and food animals; (5) crude materials for use in manufacturing; and (6) miscellaneous. The three groups first named may properly be combined as representing manufacturing industries, capital being invested in mills and machinery, and skilled labor being employed in the output of each. The aggregate value of these three classes of manufactured products exported is $1,082,647,763, constituting 59.01 per cent of the entire volume of domestic exports. Viewing them separately it is seen that, compared with 1907, in breadstuffs partly or wholly manufactured there was a decline of $13,738,227, an increase in manufactures for further use in manufacturing of $2,805,871, and an increase of $7,750,059 in manufactures ready for consumption. The following table, prepared from reports of the Bureau of Statistics, shows the movement in exports of domestic merchandise for the five years ended June 30, 1908, and from it the steady progress of manufactures in the foreign commerce of the country may be studied: It is pertinent to observe that the aggregate value of completed manufactures exported during the last fiscal year is the largest in the history of the country. By reason of the large decline in imports and the relatively small decline in exports the excess in the latter, or balance of trade, was $200,000,000 more than for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1907, and greater than that for any previous year. Respectfully submitted." JOHN M. CARSON, Chief of Bureau. Secretary of Commerce and Labor. To Hon. OSCAR S. STRAUS, REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE CENSUS. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR, BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, Washington, November 1, 1908. SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report upon the operations of the Bureau of the Census during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1908, and upon the work now in progress and shortly to be undertaken. The report covers the fifth year of my incumbency of the directorship, the sixth year of the existence of the permanent Office under the act of March 6, 1902, and the ninth year since its establishment as a temporary Office under the act of March 3, 1899. The present fiscal year is the last intercensal year, under the permanent census act, prior to the temporary reorganization of the Office, under legislation now pending in Congress, for the taking of the thirteenth decennial census. This is, therefore, an appropriate occasion to express the conviction that results have demonstrated the wisdom of the legislation which determined that hereafter the Census Office is to be a permanent continuing bureau of the Federal Government, and no longer an intermittent bureau, to be assembled with the beginning and scattered at the end of each decennial enumeration. The work of the intercensal period has fully equaled in importance and value that accomplished during the decennial period proper. It has been done. with a care, a completeness, and an accuracy that were impossible when these investigations were carried on simultaneously with the enumeration of population, agriculture, and manufactures. It has been demonstrated also that the existence of a permanent statistical office, organized upon a scale sufficiently broad to permit the effective handling of any statistical inquiry that may be required by Congress or by any department, is an imperative adjunct for the orderly conduct and administration of a great and expanding government like our own. No great nation of a degree of civilization at all equal to ours lacks an office of this character. As time passes and as the functions and facilities of the Census Office come to be more fully understood, it is to be expected that purely statistical compilations of every description will be more and more concentrated in this Bureau, which will thus become, like similar bureaus abroad, the general statistical clearing house of the Government. This conclusion may be sustained by a statement of what the permanent Census Office has done over and above the work contemplated for it when the Office was made permanent. This additional 67044-c & L 1908 -23 353 work includes the important series of monographs containing supplemental studies and analyses of the returns of the Twelfth Census; the two reports on employees and wages; the compilation and publication of the census of the Philippine Islands (1903); the two bulletins on the executive civil service of the United States; the report on marriage and divorce, covering the forty-year period from 1867 to 1906; the annual statistics of the lumber cut; the annual statistics of cities of 30,000 population and over; the compilation of the biennial official register of the United States; the census of the new state of Oklahoma (1907); the Census exhibits at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the Portland Exposition; the annual estimates of population; the annual reports on the world's consumption of cotton; the report on criminal judicial statistics; the compilation and tabulation of the Cuban census of 1907; and the publication of the census of 1790, besides the work now in progress undertaken at the request of Congress and the department, to which reference is made in this report. In addition to the work accomplished, there remains as evidence of the value of the permanent Office the fact that we have in existence to-day a complete organization ready to enter upon the thirteenth decennial enumeration, with the plans for that great work fully matured, with the records in perfect order, and with much of the preliminary work already done with a care and accuracy never before possible. Still again, there remains the great movement for coordination, cooperation, and unification in the compilation of Federal statistics of every description, a movement which naturally has its center in the Census Office, and through which it will be possible not only to avoid much of the duplication, inconsistency, and contradiction which have heretofore characterized official statistics, but also to develop more fully systematic, uniform, and scientific methods of statistical compilation. FINANCIAL STATEMENT. Attached to this report as Appendix A is the financial statement of Mr. Thomas S. Merrill, disbursing clerk of the Bureau, showing the appropriations for the conduct of the Bureau during the fiscal year 1907-8, and the expenditures thereunder. The statement covers expenditures from appropriations made for three fiscal years, because certain unexpended balances for the fiscal year 1907 were made available for the fiscal year 1908, while certain appropriations for the fiscal year 1909 were made immediately available. The expenditures during the fiscal year (including $147,215.04 for printing) were $1,407,013.42 and the unexpended balances aggregated $48,662.05. A statement of the entire cost of maintaining the Bureau from its organization in 1899 to date, apportioned between the temporary and the permanent Office, appears elsewhere in this report in connection with an estimate of the cost of the Thirteenth Census. WORK COMPLETED DURING THE YEAR. The work of the Bureau during the year is represented by bulletins and reports published, reports completed and awaiting publication, and reports, the fieldwork and compilation of which are in progress. |