The congressional apportionment act based on the twelfth census, and approved January 16, 1902, avoided the disagreeable necessity of cutting down the representation of laggard States by increasing the House membership from 357 to 386, a gain of twenty-nine members. Twelve of these (reckoning Louisiana) came from west of the Mississippi, two from New England, three each from Illinois and New York, four from the southern States east of the Mississippi, two each from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and one from Wisconsin. The number of farms shown by the twelfth census was over five and one-half million, four times the number reported in 1850, and more than a million above the number reported in 1890. This wonderful increase, greater for the last decade than for any other except that between 1870 and 1880, denoted a vast augmentation of cultivated area in the South and in the middle West. Oklahoma, Indian Territory, and Texas alone added over two hundred thousand to the number of their farms. The increase in value of farm resources exceeded the total value of agricultural investments fifty years before. In the abundant year of 1899 our cereal crops exceeded $1,484,000,000 in value, more than half this being in corn. The hay crop was worth over $445,000,000, that of potatoes $98,387,000, that of tobacco $56,993,000. Next to corn stood cotton, the crop for this year reaching a value of $323,758,000. The total value of farm and range animals in 1900 was $2,981,722,945. [Illustration: Man interviewing a family on their doorstep.] A Census-taker at work. The census of 1850 reported 123,000 manufacturing establishments, with a capital of $533,000,000. In 1900 there were 512,000 manufacturing establishments, capitalized at $9,800,000,000, employing 5,321,000 wage earners, and evolving $13,004,400,000 worth of product. In ten years the number of manufacturing plants and the value of products appeared to have increased some 30 per cent. The capital invested had multiplied slightly more, about a third. The number of hands employed had risen but a fifth, betokening the greater efficiency of the individual laborer, and the substitution of machine work for that of men's hands. Of seventy-three selected industries in 209 principal cities, the most money, $464,000,000, was invested in foundries and machine shops; the next most, $363,000,000, in breweries. $289,000,000 are employed in iron and steel manufacturing.