Introduction Under Rusk and Morton


ated $130,000 for seed distribution. The figures for seed distri-
butions during Morton's term (See Table 2, page 60) indicate
that the only effect his tirade against free dissemination had was
to bring about a record distribution in 1896. Morton retaliated
by taking seventy-nine pages of the Annual Report to list the
addresses of packages mailed under the congressional franking
privilege.

 PROMOTION OF SPECIAL CROPS
 The Rusk administration regarded the annual expenditure in
excess of $100 million for foreign sugar as a challenge to produce
more sugar at home. In 1890, five thousand packages of sugar beet
seeds, obtained by European growers mainly in France and Ger-
many, were sent to interested growers in America. Tests of beets
grown in northern and central portions of the country showed
extremely favorable results. In the two-year period between 1898
and 1900 the number of sugar processing plants jumped from
fifteen to thirty-seven, and sugar production was tripled.
 Silk production was intermittently encouraged by the govern-
ment for many years. The silkworm eggs and new varieties of
mulberry and similar trees were imported for trial. Philip Walker,
Chief of the Silk Section, visited Europe in 1889 to study the
varieties of mulberry and osage orange used there. One hundred
grafted trees of the rosea mulberry were purchased for experi-
ment. Successful silk production, however, did not depend upon
particular varieties of trees, but upon the invention of an auto-
matic reel as a substitute for expensive manual labor.

 DATE INTRODUCTIONS
 Date culture became a profitable industry in the United States
largely through the efforts of the workers in the Department of
Agriculture. In 1880, 500 date "palms" were distributed by the
Department, but the results were negligible. H. E. Van Deman,
pomologist for the Department, ordered date palms in 1889
through American consuls at Teheran and Cairo, and from
growers in Arabia and Algeria. The following year, he received
three choice varieties from Algeria and eight from Egypt, a total
of sixty-three trees. This shipment was claimed by the Depart-
ment to be the first successful introduction of rooted date suckers
in the Western Hemisphere. Growers besieged the Department