Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/211

Rh Science and Engineering—Dr. J. F. Hayford. U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Geology and Geography—Dr. R. W. Brock, director of the Canadian Geological Survey. Zoology—Professor William E. Ritter, University of California. Botany—Professor D. P. Penhallow. McGill University. Anthropology and Psychology—Dr. William H. Holmes, Bureau of American Ethnology. Social and Economic Science—President Carroll D. Wright. Clark College. Physiology and Experimental Medicine—Professor Charles S. Minot, Harvard Medical School. Education—Dr. J. E. Russell, dean of Teachers College, Columbia University.

annual report to the president is a striking document, almost bewildering in the range and magnitude of the subjects of which it treats. It is not easy to think in billions of dollars and realize what it means to say that the value of our farm products in 1908 was $7,770,000,000. This is about three hundred million dollars above the value in 1907 and three billion dollars above the value in 1899. The increase is, however, in part due to higher prices, as well as to larger production, and in so far as all prices have risen, even the farmers do not profit. But their wealth has increased greatly in recent years. The six million farms of the country are valued with their buildings and stock at twenty-eight billion dollars. While individual bank deposits have increased 12 per cent, in New York State, they have increased 28.5 per cent, in Iowa and 334 per cent, in Kansas. The farms-of Kansas, mortgaged to the east twelve years ago, now send their profits to be invested in New York. The exports of agricultural products last year were valued at over one billion dollars, representing a great increase in the wealth of the country, though it is to be feared that it in part means the sale of the fertility of the soil. Indian corn is valued at about one third of all farm crops;