Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/100

52 beet-sugar production has increased from 37,536 tons by four states in 1897 to 209,722 tons in twelve states in 1904. A large manufacturing industry has thus been developed.

In a like manner durum (or “macaroni”) wheats have been brought into the Northwest, yielding ten million bushels a year; chicory growing in the North, new cottons in the South, and date and fig growing in the Southwest. New fruits, both pomaceous and citrous, have been introduced or developed by plant breeding. Existing animal industries have been encouraged and existing breeds replaced or improved.

Work along all these lines is going forward with increasing success, and there is a prospect that the department will accomplish as much in the four years upon which Secretary Wilson is just entering as it has in the eight already passed.

During his entire public life Secretary Wilson has controlled and directed the management of his own farm of 1200 acres near Traer, and in every public office which he has held he has been selected as a representative farmer. While in congress he was always a member of the committee on Agriculture, and he was very early identified with legislation to make the department of agriculture a leading executive branch of the Government. In the forty-third House he introduced and secured the passage of a bill for that purpose. Later he worked in earnest cooperation with the late W. H. Hatch of Missouri for the legislation for the suppression of contagious diseases of animals under which the Bureau of Animal Industry was established and pleuro-pneumonia of cattle was eradicated from the United States.