REPORT.

To His Excellency, Governor James D. Porter:

In obedience to the requirements of the Act of March 4, 1875, creating this department, I herewith submit my Biennial Report of the operations of this Bureau for the twenty-four months ending 6th of December, 1878.

It

When created, this Bureau was an experiment in Tennessee. was not to be expected that it would at once receive that cordial cooperation so necessary to its effective working. In the first two years, however, the effects of the department met with a response hearty beyond expectation. Opposition appeared in some quarters, it is true, but this opposition only served by discussion to bring out the advantages of such a department. The efforts to collect trustworthy data concerning our great resources, our farming operations, the lands, ores and mines, and the facilities offered immigrants, were seconded by the intelligent citizens of the State exceeding all expectations. Abroad, too, the newspaper press received these efforts with marked commendation which served to give a wide advertisement to the world of our many and varied unoccupied fields of industry. Believing from the the first that such a Bureau had to demonstrate its utility and that it was a progressive movement neither to be perfected by simply creating it, nor to acquire confidence in a year, I am gratified at being able to report a wider area of support and popular interest in the second two years of its existence than could have been deemed possible when such work was unknown and untried. With each year sources of information increased in number and reliability, means became perfected and the necessity and use for information every day grew manifest.

Recognizing the dual nature of the work to be done it has been the constant aim of this Bureau to stimulate progress by furnishing accurate information pertaining to new industries which could be gathered from other communities or countries more advanced than our own, and also to attract from abroad the very means of progress: viz., capital and immigrants. This is not only in exact compliance with the Act which adds the duties of Commissioner of Immigration to the Bureau of Agriculture, Statistics and Mines, but is also the course dictated by the condition of Tennessee. Our progress is in our own hands partly to be wrought within the State by learning how to make the best use of all the elements of wealth we have, and partly to be procured from abroad in the shape of capital and immigration the most powerful levers of progress to a thinly populated country.

The first obvious necessity is an active movement in real estate. Nearly the whole capital of the people of Tennessee is invested in real estate. A part of this should be unlocked, so as to enter into new industries or infuse life in the old. A paralysis exists everywhere for the want of capital-capital to improve our farms, to employ the idle, to erect manufactories of iron, cotton and wool and other industries for which we have natural facilities, and to give diversity to our pursuits, without which there can be but little progress, either in our material or mental condition. Activity in real estate can only be obtained by immigration. When every State in the West and Southwest is actively engaged with agents, money and enterprise in seeking an influx of population,-when every railway line in the State is warmly enlisted in the work, we have the alternative presented of engaging in active competition or of losing an old population and obtaining nothing in its place. When every State of the growing West has its Bureau of Immigration and its solicitors, we may be sure that immigration will be attracted to those States where it is invited and welcomed. Nothing represses immigration more than apathy and indifference on the part of the law-making power. For as it is supposed to be the embodiment of the popular will so its action and animus will be considered by intelligent immigrants in seeking new homes. Population, thrifty, contented population is wealth. This was well illustrated a few years since by Minnesota. She spent $50,000 annually for two years for immigration purposes and the immediate result was an

increase of $100,000,000 in her taxable property-a practical demonstration of the value of immigration and suggestive of great activity in real estate.

We are just now on the eve of a large growth which calls for redoubled exertion. The tide has already begun to set in this direction. It is necessary to keep it flowing. Compared with most of the States east of the Mississippi, Tennessee offers an unexceptionable field for the immigrant. We are not disturbed by a large negro population. Our soil and climate excel, and our products are more varied that those of any other State. Every column in the National census, showing the Agricultural products of the United States, is represented by the State of Tennessee. We occupy the line of the golden mean. The productions of both North and South here overlap, while the climate of every State, from Mississippi to Canada, is here found, by reason of the varying elevation. The Northern States are already filled up with population, while we possess the means of growth and expansion, which ought to make the next decade a period of growth and activity. Growth with States may be sound and healthy, but not be slow. With our unoccupied land and great mineral resources and water privileges, we are in a condition to expect an active movement in real estate, a rapid and wholesome progress, a stimulation to business of all kinds, provided we labor to keep up the tide of immigration now setting in this direction.

The necessity for this, however, lies back of a desire to improve our condition in the necessity for replacing actual losses by immigration. We need not be concerned about the population we are losing, except in so far as we must supply their place. Even discontented citizens are worth something. Their emigration will be our gain if we can supply their places with contented, thrifty settlers. A citizen discontented in his old home, may be a contented, valuable citizen in his new one, for then he becomes perforce an active producer. He has then no prop to discontented unthrift. Old associations are broken, old habits interfered with and a new life is opened to him. It is worthy of note, however, that there is a wide difference in the reasons for the discontent which cperate to cause the migration of those we lose and those we gain-our native-born citizens move because they cannot or will not adapt themselves to a new order, because they have not or will not acquire the active en

ergy demanded by the times. The emigrants we gain are generally active, thrifty men who leave over-crowded communities and seek better climate and soil to acquire cheap homes. Each one who departs from us leaves a vacuum which must be filled, but in going he generally subtracts from the community a consumer who was not a valuable producer. The place he leaves may be filled by an intelligent, thrifty man, both a consumer and a valuable producer.

Every piece of land left by the outgoing emigrant is either filled by a new comer, or is waiting for a market. We are admonished by our emigration to seek immigration, and with the States around us sharply competing we cannot obtain it without vigorous exertion. Many of these States have applied for copies of the law creating this department, and are adopting our system and expending more money than we are in their efforts to get immigration and to improve their condition. The only advantage Tennessee has is in the start and in her superior climate and capabilities.

Apart from the social value of an immigrant, he has a direct money value as clearly determinable as the value of a horse or other domestic animal. In general terms, a citizen is worth to the State what it costs to raise, educate him and prepare him for business. If he is not worth this, the State of which he is a citizen must be growing poorer each year. If he is worth more, the State is growing in wealth. Dr. Engel, an eminent German authority, estimates the money value of a man of average ability at $1,500. Dr. Edward Young, estimating the value of a man from a different standpoint, places it at $800. If the laborer is worth $1,500 as a producing agent in Germany, his value is certainly not far if any less here. Taking the lowest estimate, however, every 1,000 men added to our population have a direct money value of $800,000. Within the last two years we have added to our population between 7,000 and 8,000 persons, and their money value, counting men and women, cannot be less that $4,000,000. This is only estimating the value of muscle directed by ordinary intelligence. The value of a man of great moral force and ability cannot be estimated. There is also a further value in associated value. Each individual may accomplish so much as a single factor, but by association numbers accomplish in addition that which individuals cannot attempt. The man is not only worth so much as a separate laborer, but he adds also a power impossible to estimate as a factor in the association we call