I recommend that the Congress at its present session apportion representation among the several States as provided by the Constitution.

The Department of Agriculture has been extending its work during the past year, reaching farther for new varieties of seeds and plants; co-operating more fully with the States and Territories in research along useful lines; making progress in meteorological work relating to lines of wireless telegraphy and forecasts for ocean-going vessels; continuing inquiry as to animal disease; looking into the extent and character of food adulteration; outlining plans for the care, preservation, and intelligent harvesting of our woodlands; studying soils that producers may cultivate with better knowledge of conditions, and helping to clothe desert places with grasses suitable to our arid regions.  Our island possessions are being considered that their peoples may be helped to produce the tropical products now so extensively brought into the United States.  Inquiry into methods of improving our roads has been active during the year; help has been given to many localities, and scientific investigation of material in the States and Territories has been inaugurated.  Irrigation problems in our semiarid regions are receiving careful and increased consideration.

An extensive exhibit at Paris of the products of agriculture has made the peoples of many countries more familiar with the varied products of our fields and their comparative excellence.

The collection of statistics regarding our crops is being improved and sources of information are being enlarged, to the end that producers may have the earliest advices regarding crop conditions.  There has never been a time when those for whom it was established have shown more appreciation of the services of the Department.

In my annual message of December 5, 1898, I called attention to the necessity for some amendment of the alien contract law.  There still remain important features of the rightful application of the eight-hour law for the benefit of labor and of the principle of arbitration, and I again commend these subjects to the careful attention of the Congress.

That there may be secured the best service possible in the Philippine Islands, I have issued, under date of November 30, 1900, the following order: 

The United States Civil Service Commission is directed to render such assistance as may be practicable to the Civil Service Board, created under the act of the United States Philippine Commission, for the establishment and maintenance of an honest and efficient civil service in the Philippine Islands, and for that purpose to conduct examinations for the civil service of the Philippine Islands, upon the request of the Civil Service Board of said islands, under such regulations as may be agreed upon by the said Board and the said United States Civil Service Commission.

The Civil Service Commission is greatly embarrassed