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Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LIV
NOVEMBER, 1898, TO APRIL, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
VOL. LIV. ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS. NO. 2.
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
DECEMBER, 1898.
_EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. Wheat-growing Capacity of the United States. By E.
ATKINSON, 145
II. The Racial Geography of Europe. The Jews. By Prof.
WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY. (Illustrated.), 163
III. The Playgrounds of Rural and Suburban Schools. By
I. G. OAKLEY, 176
IV. Up the Skeena River. By GEORGE A. DORSEY, Ph. D.
(Illus.), 181
V. Light and Vegetation. By Prof. D. T. MACDOUGAL, 193
VI. The Stone Age in Egypt. By J. DE MORGAN, 202
VII. Superstition and Crime. By Prof. E. P. EVANS, 206
VIII. A Geological Romance. By Prof. J. A. UDDEN.
(Illustrated.), 222
IX. The Season of the Year. By GRANT ALLEN, 230
X. Brain Weights and Intellectual Capacity. By JOSEPH
SIMMS, M. D., 243
XI. Speleology, or Cave Exploration. By M. E. A. MARTEL, 255
XII. Sketch of Charles Henry Hitchcock. (With Portrait.), 260
XIII. Editor's Table: Evolution and Education.--David Ames
Wells.--A Borrowed Foundation, 269
XIV. Scientific Literature, 274
XV. Fragments of Science, 282
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
72 FIFTH AVENUE.
SINGLE NUMBER, 50 CENTS. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00.
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, and admitted for
transmission through the mails at second-class rates.
[Illustration: CHARLES H. HITCHCOCK.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
DECEMBER, 1898.
THE WHEAT-GROWING CAPACITY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY EDWARD ATKINSON.
In 1880 it happened to fall to me to make a forecast of the very
great reduction in the price of wheat in Great Britain, which could
then be predicated on the lessening cost of transportation from
Chicago to the seaboard, thence to British ports, which was then
sure to be soon followed by a large reduction in the railway charges
for bringing the wheat to Chicago from the other Western centers of
distribution. I then alleged that the time was not far off when,
even if the price of wheat in Mark Lane were reduced from the then
existing rate of fifty-two shillings per quarter to thirty-four
shillings, it would still yield as full a return to the Western
farmer as it had yielded in previous years at fifty shillings and
upward. This forecast attracted great attention, and has since been
made the subject of very much bitter controversy, especially since
the fall in prices was much more rapid than I then thought it could
be, and was carried to a much lower point than any one could have
then anticipated. It will be remarked that thirty-four shillings in
Mark Lane is at the rate of one dollar and three cents per bushel of
sixty pounds.
From time to time I have almost been forced to defend the position
then taken, notably when asked to appear before the Royal Commission
on Depression in Agriculture at one of their sessions, where I was
kept upon the stand for two full days in the effort of the excellent
English farmers and landowners to prove that the American farmer
had been ruined by the reduction in the price of wheat, which the
majority of that commission attributed to the demonetization of
silver. The whole tone of that investigation and of a large part of
the treatment of the wheat question in Great Britain has been one of
complaint and of alleged wrong to British agriculture because the
United States had succeeded in supplying the masses of the people
of the United Kingdom with cheap bread, with sufficient profit to
themselves to keep up the supply.
Now comes what may be called a cry of alarm from a scientist of
highest repute lest England may be deprived even of an adequate
supply of wheat, and lest the price should be forced to an
exorbitant point. This view of the case was stated at great length
by Sir William Crookes when assuming the presidency of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science at the recent meeting in
Bristol. This address is published in full in the Times of September
8th, the portion devoted to the wheat question filling three out of
six columns of closely printed text; the other three are devoted to
a complete review of the existing conditions of science. I venture
to give a few extracts which will convey to the reader the aspect of
the wheat question from this essentially British point of view. Sir
William Crookes begins with a sort of apology, which the writer can
fully appreciate. He says:
"Statistics are rarely attractive to a listening audience, but
they are necessary evils, and those of this evening are unusually
doleful.... I am constrained to show that our wheat-producing soil is
totally unequal to the strain put upon it. After wearying you with a
survey of the universal dearth to be expected, I hope to point a way
out of the colossal dilemma. It is the chemist who must come to the
rescue of the threatened communities. It is through the laboratory
that starvation may ultimately be turned into plenty."
One of the singular facts which becomes quickly apparent to any one
who deals with this subject in Great Britain is the inability of the
English farmer to think about agriculture except in terms of wheat.
Now we have an example of our English scientist of the highest repute
who seems to ignore all other grain and to predict future starvation
on an expected deficiency in the supply of wheat. Sir William Crookes
proceeds:
"The consumption of wheat per head of the population (unit
consumption) is over six bushels per annum; and, taking the
population at 40,000,000, we require no less than 240,000,000 bushels
of wheat, increasing annually by 2,000,000 bushels to supply the
increase of population. Of the total amount of wheat consumed in the
United Kingdom we grow twenty-five and import seventy-five per cent."
He then deals with the impending scarcity, saying:
"To arrest this impending danger it has been proposed that an amount
of 64,000,000 bushels of wheat should be purchased by the state and
stored in national granaries, not to be opened except to remedy
deterioration of grain, or in view of national disaster rendering
starvation imminent. This 64,000,000 bushels would add another
fourteen weeks' life to the population."
After dealing with the fact that while it might be possible for the
United Kingdom to supply itself with its own wheat at an average
of twenty-nine and a half bushels to the acre, he goes on to say
that this would require thirteen thousand square miles of British
territory, increasing at the rate of one hundred square miles per
annum; but he says it would be clearly impossible to assign so large
a proportion of the area of the United Kingdom to a single crop
without suffering in other matters, adding:
"In any case, owing to our cold, damp climate and capricious weather,
the wheat crop is hazardous, and for the present our annual deficit
of 180,000,000 bushels must be imported. A permanently higher price
for wheat is, I fear, a calamity that ere long must be faced."
I can imagine with what a relish the Royal Commission on the
Depression of Agriculture would have received this prophecy of a
permanently higher price for wheat. Sir William Crookes goes on to
say:
"Wheat is the most sustaining food grain of the great Caucasian race,
which includes the peoples of Europe, United States, British America,
the white inhabitants of South Africa, Australasia, parts of South
America, and the white population of the European colonies."
He then points out how rapidly the consumers of wheat have increased,
yet failing to attribute this increase in part to the rapid reduction
in the cost. He says:
"In 1871 the bread-eaters of the world numbered 371,000,000; in 1881,
416,000,000; in 1891, 472,600,000; and at the present time they
number 516,500,000. The augmentation of the world's bread-eating
population in a geometrical ratio is evidenced by the fact that the
yearly aggregates grow progressively larger.... To supply 516,500,000
bread-eaters, if each bread-eating unit is to have his usual ration,
will require a total of 2,324,000,000 bushels for seed and food.
According to the best authorities, the total supplies from the
1897-'98 harvest are 1,921,000,000."
It will be observed that while the English average consumption is
said to be six bushels, the average employed in this computation is
four and a half bushels per head. He then remarks upon the large
harvests for seven years, saying:
"Bread-eaters have almost eaten up the reserves of wheat, and the
1897 harvest being under average, the conditions become serious....
It is clear we are confronted with a colossal problem that must tax
the wits of the wisest. Up to recent years the growth of wheat has
kept pace with demands. As wheat-eaters increased, the acreage under
wheat expanded. We forget that the wheat-growing area is of strictly
limited extent, and that a few million acres regularly absorbed soon
amount to a formidable number. The present position being so gloomy,
let us consider future prospects."
He then deals successively with the United States, Russia, Canada,
and other countries. In regard to the United States he remarks:
"Practically there remains no uncultivated prairie land in the
United States suitable for wheat-growing. The virgin land has been
rapidly absorbed, until at present there is no land left for wheat
without reducing the area for maize, hay, and other necessary crops.
It is almost certain that within a generation the ever-increasing
population of the United States will consume all the wheat grown
within its borders, and will be driven to import, and, like
ourselves, will scramble for a lion's share of the wheat crop of the
world."
It is difficult for a citizen of the United States who has given any
attention to the potential of our land to conceive of such views
being held by an Englishman of highest scientific intelligence. When
I was in England last summer I had a long interview with the editor
of one of the papers of widest influence in all Great Britain. I then
remarked that there were forces in action in the United States in
three or four different directions which would profoundly change all
the conditions of British industry, and render the English-speaking
people of the United Kingdom and the United States more and more
interdependent. It is seldom that one finds more than an occasional
half a column in any great English paper devoted to the subject of
our economic relations and to the development either of the American
iron industry, of its agriculture, or of the cotton production and
manufacture. Yet, in all these branches of industry, profound changes
of world-wide importance, and yet of greater importance to the
people of Great Britain, are now in progress. I may venture to say
that this address of Sir William Crookes marks even a more profound
ignorance of the forces in action in this country than even I had
ever comprehended. Sir William Crookes next submits the following
computation:
"The rate of consumption for seed and food by the whole world of
bread-eaters was 4.15 bushels per unit per annum for the eight years
ending 1878, and at the present time is 4.5 bushels.... Should all
the wheat-growing countries add to their area to the utmost capacity,
on the most careful calculation the yield would give us only an
addition of some 100,000,000 acres, supplying at the average world
yield of 12.7 bushels to the acre, 1,270,000,000 bushels, just enough
to supply the increase of population among bread-eaters till the year
1931. At the present time there exists a deficit in the wheat area
of thirty-one thousand square miles.... When provision shall have
been made if possible to feed 230,000,000 units likely to be added to
the bread-eating populations by 1931, by the complete occupancy of
the arable areas of the temperate zone now partially occupied, where
can be grown the additional 330,000,000 bushels of wheat required
ten years later by a hungry world? If bread fails--not only us, but
all the bread-eaters of the world--what are we to do? We are born
wheat-eaters. Other races, vastly superior to us in numbers, but
differing widely in material and intellectual progress, are eaters of
Indian corn, rice, millet, and other grains; but none of these grains
have the food value, the concentrated health-sustaining power of
wheat, and it is on this account that the accumulated experience of
civilized mankind has set wheat apart as the fit and proper food for
the development of muscle and brains."
Sir William then proceeds to deal with the salvation by chemistry.
But before taking notes from that part of his address, is it not
singular to remark this tendency of the scientist as well as of the
English farmer to think only in terms of wheat, wholly ignoring other
grains? It may be interesting to point out the exact difference in
the nutrients.
Wheat flour is analyzed in the following statement:
Water 11.6
Protein 11.1
Fats 1.1
Carbohydrates 75.6
Mineral matters 0.6
----
Total nutrients 88.4
Potential energy in one pound 1,660 calories.
Corn or maize meal differs only as follows:
Water 14.5
Protein 9.1
Fats 3.8
Carbohydrates 71.0
Mineral matters 1.6
----
Total nutrients 85.5
Potential energy in one pound 1,650 calories.
Oatmeal:
Water 7.7
Protein 15.1
Fats 7.1
Carbohydrates 68.1
Mineral matters 2.0
----
Total nutrients 92.3
Potential energy in one pound 1,845 calories.
Rye flour:
Water 13.1
Protein 6.7
Fats 0.8
Carbohydrates 78.7
Mineral matters 0.7
----
Total nutrients 86.9
Potential energy in one pound 1,620 calories.
It will be remarked that the difference between maize meal and
wheat flour consists only in a slightly larger proportion of fats
and a slightly less proportion of protein, a matter very easily
balanced by giving consideration to the other kinds of food which
may be used by the bread-eater. Again, it is hardly to be supposed
that the Scotchmen who listened to Sir William Crookes admitted in
their minds that wheat flour possessed any greater potential energy
in the development either of muscle or of mind than the oatmeal to
which they have been habituated for so many generations. I doubt if
any New England Yankee who had been brought up on the diet of corn
(maize) bread and baked beans, the latter supplying the protein
element in abundance, would admit any greater development of the
muscle or brain by exclusive dependence on wheat for the bread of
life. It is not, however, my purpose to deal with the relative food
values of wheat and other grains; it is simply to take up this
extraordinary delusion of Sir William Crookes in respect to the
potential of the wheat-producing area of this country. His theory
is salvation by chemistry, and he rightfully calls attention to the
necessity for obtaining a cheap and abundant supply of nitrogen. All
the other elements for fertilizing the soil are relatively abundant
at low cost, especially in this country. Our enormous supply of the
phosphates of lime and potash gives assurance on this matter, and our
one deficiency, or rather the one element heretofore of high cost,
has been the necessary proportion of nitrogen required to maintain an
even balance in the soil.
I am surprised that Sir William Crookes should attribute so little
importance to the recent discovery of the influence of bacteria,
which living and dying in nodules attached to the stalks of the
leguminous plants dissociate the nitrogen of the atmosphere, where
the supply is unlimited, converting it to the nutrition of the
plant, and thence to the renovation of the soil. Sir William deals
only with the renovating qualities of clover, having apparently no
comprehension of the existence of the cow-pea vine, the soya bean,
the alfalfa, and many other types of legumes by which the partially
exhausted soil, especially of the South, is now being renovated with
great rapidity at a low cost. Sir William's hopes of nitrogen seem
to be based on some method being found to save the sewage of cities,
but mainly on the conversion of the water power of Niagara and other
great falls to the generation of electricity and thence to the
dissociation of the nitrogen of the atmosphere.
The point to which I wish to direct attention and inquiry is this
alleged nearly complete taking up of the land of the United States
capable of producing wheat in paying quantities. The question which
Sir William Crookes puts is this: He says there is a deficit in
the wheat area of thirty-one thousand square miles which must be
converted to wheat-growing in order to keep up with the increasing
demand of the world to prevent wheat starvation in less than one
generation. It will be observed that the present necessities of the
world are computed by Sir William Crookes at 2,324,000,000 bushels,
of which this country will supply 600,000,000 to 700,000,000 bushels
from an area of land devoted to wheat of 71,000 square miles, a
fraction over two per cent of the area of the United States, omitting
Alaska.
The problem may then be stated in these terms: Given a demand of the
wheat-consuming population of the world for this whole supply of
2,324,000,000 bushels, this country could supply it at the present
average per acre by devoting two hundred and fifty thousand square
miles to this crop, or less than ten per cent of the area, omitting
Alaska. We could supply the world's present demand, but of course
such computations are purely speculative.
I venture to say that if a contract could be entered into by the
bread-eaters of the world with the farmers of the United States,
giving them an assurance of a price equal to one dollar a bushel
in London, or a fraction under thirty-three shillings per quarter
of eight bushels of sixty pounds each, which would yield to the
American farmer from sixty to eighty cents per bushel on the farm,
the land now under cultivation in wheat and not required for any
other crop or for pasture would be opened in the United States
which would be devoted to this service year by year as fast as the
consumption called for it. In fact, there are now fully one hundred
thousand square miles of land, 64,000,000 acres, fully suitable to
the production of wheat at fifteen bushels to the acre, practically
unoccupied in any branch of agriculture, which would be devoted
to wheat on an assured price of one dollar a bushel in Mark Lane,
yielding 960,000,000 bushels. Or, to limit the question yet more: Sir
William Crookes states the needs of the people of the United Kingdom
at the present time to be 240,000,000 bushels, increasing at a rate
of less than two per cent per annum, of which twenty-five per cent
is derived from her own soil. If John Bull, in place of building
granaries, could offer thirty-three shillings a quarter, or one
dollar a bushel, in London as a permanent price for the next thirty
years, would not Uncle Sam accept the offer? and if Uncle Sam should
then ask for bids among the States, are there not several single
States or Territories that would take the contract each for itself?
Having put that question, I now propose to submit an inquiry in due
form in order to sustain my own belief that we can supply the whole
present and the increasing demand of Great Britain for the next
thirty years with six bushels of wheat per head at a dollar a bushel
from land situated wholly in the Indian Territory, not yet open to
private entry, but which may soon be open when the Indian titles have
all been purchased. Or, again, I undertake to say that the State of
Texas can meet this whole demand without impairing in the slightest
degree its present products of grain, cotton, wool, and meats, and
without appropriating the use of more than a small fraction of
the area of that single State which has not yet been fenced in or
subjected to the plow to the production of wheat.
Perhaps it would be better to put a more simple proposition in order
to bring out what would be perfectly feasible. Let it be assumed
that the British public should really become so alarmed as to be
willing to put up the granaries which have been suggested for storing
fourteen weeks' consumption, or 64,000,000 bushels. That would
require a very large capital which would yield no income on which
there would be a heavy loss of interest and a considerable risk of
damage to the wheat during the period of storage. In place of this a
feasible plan would be to put up the capital which would be required
for building these granaries, invest it in consols, and pledge it as
collateral security for the fulfillment of a contract running for
thirty years for the annual purchase of 10,000,000 bushels of wheat
per month, or say 128,000,000 bushels a year, or twice the quantity
proposed to be stored.
There are several large dealers in grain and provisions in the United
States who would be ready to take this contract and to put up a
sufficient sum of capital invested in United States bonds to serve as
security for prompt delivery.
An assured supply of 128,000,000 bushels in addition to the ordinary
supply might allay the fear of scarcity and high price of bread.
It may here be observed that the low average crop per acre of the
United States has been due to the inclusion of wheat grown on land
partially exhausted by cropping or not well adapted to this grain.
The all-wheat as well as the all-cotton and all-tobacco methods of
ignorant farming or cropping year after year are now very rapidly
giving place to varied crops coupled with an increase of product
per acre. No agency has been of such service in this matter as the
Agricultural Experiment Stations, now established in almost every
State under the supervision of men of the highest capacity. Under
this system wheat, which requires a few days of machine work in the
spring and autumn, occupying very little time of the farmer himself,
is rapidly becoming the surplus or money crop of farms otherwise
maintained on the alternate products. Under such cultivation an
average crop of twenty bushels to the acre would be assured, in many
sections much more. One hundred and twenty-eight million bushels
at twenty bushels per acre would require 6,400,000 acres, or ten
thousand square miles. As an alternate with other crops in a rotation
of four, this would call for only forty thousand square miles in
varied farming. In order to satisfy the anxieties of Sir William
Crookes lest land should be taken from other necessary work, this
area might be divided among several States and Territories, say five
thousand square miles among eight. Oklahoma (38,719 square miles)
was opened to settlement only seven years since, and has yet a great
deal of unoccupied land. It will this year raise 13,000,000 bushels
of wheat from 850 square miles devoted to the crop. Give Oklahoma
five thousand square miles, the unoccupied Indian Territory (30,272
square miles) would take all the rest as soon as open; but we may
only assign five thousand square miles to that area. Five thousand
more might be assigned to the limestone section of Virginia, in the
valley of the Shenandoah and its tributaries; five thousand each to
Kentucky (40,400 square miles) and Tennessee (42,050 square miles),
while the great wheat-growing States--Kansas (82,080 square miles),
Nebraska (77,510 square miles), Minnesota (83,365 square miles),
and the two Dakotas (148,445 square miles)--would compete for the
contract each to open a little patch of five thousand square miles,
not yet adjacent to railways. We should thus have exhausted the area
called for without regard to the instant competition which would come
from California (158,360 square miles), Oregon (96,030 square miles),
and Washington (69,180 square miles), and probably from Pennsylvania
(45,215 square miles) and other Eastern or Southern States. At a
dollar per bushel in London no difficulty would be found in placing
this contract even without resort to Texas (265,780 square miles),
which could take the whole on but a small portion of its area not yet
under the plow.
The only additional measure which would then be required would be
one which must come in any event--namely, the neutralization of
the ports of export and import of food in the United States and
Great Britain and in such other countries as may choose to join,
together with the neutralization of a ferry or sea way for the
transportation of the food, wherein no hostile shot should be fired
and no seizure of private property permitted on the part of any
nation, the condition of this understanding being that if any other
nation ventured to question or contest this dedication of a neutral
way for the conveyance of food to the purposes of peace, the navies
of Great Britain and of the United States would be united to force
its acceptance, and to sweep from the ocean the fleet of every state
or nation which ventured to contest this measure. That would be a
suitable measure for beginning to make a right use of navies--for
the protection of commerce and for the destruction of every fleet or
vessel which did not accept the principle that private property not
contraband of war should be exempt from seizure upon the high seas,
coupled with a declaration limiting contraband of war so that it may
never be made to include customary articles of commerce, especially
food, not now contraband.
* * * * *
The foregoing text was set in type and one hundred advance proof
sheets were supplied, which have been sent by the writer to the
Secretaries of Agriculture and the chiefs of the Agricultural
Experiment Stations in all the States to which we look for any
considerable product of wheat. The replies are so complete and so
numerous as to make it impossible to incorporate a full digest of the
whole case within the limits of the present article. A supplement
will be prepared for a later number of this journal, in which this
information will be tabulated. For the present purpose I may avail
myself only of a part of the data which have been sent to me.
1. The evidence suffices to prove that there is not a State named
above which could not set apart five thousand square miles for the
cultivation of wheat in a rotation of four without trenching in the
slightest degree upon any other crop. 2. In previous essays, in which
I have dealt with the potential of the agriculture of this country,
I have very guardedly computed but one half our total area of three
million square miles (omitting Alaska) as being arable land, suitable
for the plow. The returns now in my hands would render it suitable to
increase that area to two thirds, or two million square miles subject
to cultivation. 3. The area now under the plow for the production of
our principal crops for the year 1897 is given in the table below. If
miscellaneous crops be added to these principal crops, the cultivated
land of this country does not now exceed, and in fact does not reach,
twenty per cent of the arable land, while from the cultivated portion
a progressive increase in product may be expected under the impetus
of improved methods of farming on lessening areas in each farm.
------------+------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
| Acreage. |Yield.| Product. |Price. | Value.
------------+------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
| | Per | Bushels. |Cents. |
| |acre. | | |
Maize | 80,095,051 | 23.8 |1,902,967,933| 26.3 | $501,072,952
Wheat | 39,465,066 | 13.4 | 530,149,168| 80.8 | 428,547,121
Oats | 25,730,375 | 27.2 | 698,767,809| 21.2 | 147,974,719
Barley | 2,719,116 | 24.5 | 66,685,127| 37.7 | 25,142,139
Rye | 1,703,561 | 16.1 | 27,363,324| 44.7 | 12,239,647
Buckwheat | 717,836 | 20.9 | 14,997,451| 42.1 | 6,319,188
|------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
All grain |150,431,005 | |3,240,930,812| |$1,121,295,766
Hay | 42,426,770 | 1.43 | 60,664,876| 6.62 | 401,390,728
Cotton | 23,273,209 | | 8,532,705| 6.78 | 291,811,564
|------------| | | |--------------
|216,130,984 | | | |$1,814,498,058
------------+------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
Maize 125,150 square miles;
Wheat 61,660 " "
Oats 40,200 " "
Barley 4,250 " "
Rye 2,660 " "
Buckwheat 1,120 " "
-------
235,040 " "
Hay 66,290 " "
Cotton 36,520 " "
-------
337,850 " "
The area under wheat in 1897 was a fraction under forty million
acres, or a little less than sixty-two thousand square miles. The
high price secured for that crop has led to an increase in land under
wheat in 1898 to a fraction under seventy-one thousand square miles
(nine thousand square miles added), on which the largest crop ever
known has doubtless been raised, variously computed at the present
time from 620,000,000 to 700,000,000 bushels. The area now under
wheat is therefore less than four per cent of our arable land.
In order to develop our potential in wheat it will be best to limit
our present consideration to three States only--namely, Minnesota,
North and South Dakota--from which we derive the greater part of
our spring wheat. The area of these three States is two hundred and
thirty-two thousand square miles, disregarding fractions. The land
which is deemed to be suitable for wheat growing is estimated by the
officials from whom I have derived reports at one hundred and sixty
thousand square miles. The crop of 1898 is computed at 190,000,000
bushels, a quantity sufficient to supply Great Britain with all that
she needs in addition to her domestic production. It has been grown
on an area of less than twenty thousand square miles, or upon one
eighth part of the land of these three States only; the rest of the
wheat land can be as surely and profitably devoted to the production
of wheat as that part already under that crop. The fact may be
recalled that the territory which now constitutes the two States of
North and South Dakota began to be computed separately from other
States only in 1880, when a little under 3,000,000 bushels were
credited to that territory. The minimum product of these two States
this year will be 100,000,000 bushels.
One of the authorities upon whom I rested for absolute information
is Mr. L. G. Powers, chief of the Bureau of Labor of the State of
Minnesota, in whose Annual Report for 1896 is the most exhaustive
study of the grain production of the Mississippi Valley that has ever
been made. I therefore do not hesitate to incorporate in this article
his comments upon the proof sheets sent to him:
"The probable product of wheat in a State like Minnesota, at a
fixed price, such as Mr. Atkinson mentions, can be estimated, even
approximately, only by taking account of a number of such factors as
the present actual and relative profit of the wheat farmer, and the
probable changes that will be made in the next few years in the cost
of cultivating wheat and of transporting it to London. A few of the
leading well-known facts relating to these subjects may with profit
be noted in this connection, and first a few words with reference to
the profits of wheat raising in Minnesota.
"Whatever may be true of wheat raising in Europe, or in the Atlantic
coast States of America, it can be positively asserted that the
average profit of the Minnesota wheat grower has been steadily though
irregularly increasing since the admission of this State to the
Union in 1858. This is evidenced by the relative number and amount
of farm-mortgage foreclosures in the State, as a whole, and in its
several sections at the present time and in the past. Properly to
use those foreclosures as a measure of the increasing prosperity of
the Minnesota wheat farmer, two facts should be kept in mind. In
1880, and prior to that time, the industry of wheat growing was most
fully developed in those counties which now constitute the First
Congressional District. The farmers of those counties at that time
depended for their income largely upon their wheat crops. Later they
have adopted a highly diversified system of agriculture in which
wheat is only an incidental cash crop. The exclusive cultivation
of wheat now finds its seat in the counties composing the Seventh
Congressional District. The lands of this district are situated
about two hundred miles on an average farther from the markets
of Europe than those of the First District. Notwithstanding this
fact and all changes in the selling price of wheat, and all allied
changes affecting the wheat industry of the State, the farm-mortgage
foreclosures in the Seventh District in the five years ending with
December, 1897, were relatively twenty per cent less than they were
in the First District in the five years 1880 to 1884, and were forty
per cent less than in the five years 1869 to 1873. To the extent
represented by these figures has the average cultivation of wheat as
an exclusive crop become more profitable in Minnesota than it was
twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. A much greater increase of farm
prosperity has taken place in those counties which have adopted a
diversified system of agriculture, and made wheat an incidental cash
crop.
"The growing farm prosperity in Minnesota above noted finds its
highest development in the past five years, during which the selling
price of wheat in London has averaged approximately one dollar per
bushel, or the amount called for by the conditions stated by Mr.
Atkinson. This increasing farm prosperity in Minnesota, which lessens
the mortgage foreclosures of the exclusive wheat growers forty per
cent in thirty years, has been the main factor in the settlement of
Minnesota and the two Dakotas. It has caused the wheat grown in the
territory of these three States to increase from 10,000,000 bushels
in 1867 to 190,000,000 bushels in 1898. With no added profit in the
business, the settlement of the vacant lands of these States and
those of Montana and of the British Northwest will move on, and
twenty-five years from now will find in the territory tributary to
Minneapolis and Duluth not less than 400,000,000 bushels of wheat
raised annually. Even then but a fraction of the possible wheat lands
of the great Northwest will be under the plow. If a material increase
should take place in the present average profits of the Northwestern
wheat grower, the imagination of man could hardly picture the
stimulus to wheat culture that would result.
"With a fixed price of one dollar per bushel in London, called for by
Mr. Atkinson's conditions, the American farmers can find increased
profit in two possible sources: decreased cost of transportation
to London, and lessening cost of wheat production in Minnesota. A
detailed analysis of the various charges that constitute the present
cost of transporting wheat from the Red River Valley of Minnesota,
the Dakotas, and of Manitoba to London gives reasonable assurance of
a reduction in the next few years of at least five and possibly seven
cents per bushel in such cost. Here is an almost certain addition,
in the next few years, of from five to seven cents a bushel to the
profit of American-grown wheat, providing only its average selling
price in London remains practically unchanged.
"A careful study of farm methods among Minnesota farmers discloses
this fact: Some wheat growers, with the best farm machinery, and
employing the best methods of agriculture, make a profit in wheat
raising of from ten to fifteen cents a bushel more than do their
less intelligent and less progressive neighbors. Now, the tendency
in the State and throughout the Northwest is to bring, by education
and a general exchange of methods, the poorer farmers up to the
level of the best. This change is rapidly taking place. It will not
require fifteen years to realize its consummation. When the methods
and facilities of the average farmer are brought up to the level of
the best of the present time, this change, with the change above
noted in transportation charges, will add to the average profit of
Minnesota farmers in growing wheat a total of not less than fifteen
and possibly of over twenty cents a bushel. Such a change would
more than double the existing net profit of the wheat grower in
the Northwest. Could it be maintained for a series of years, as is
presupposed under Mr. Atkinson's supposition of London prices, it
would furnish such an incentive to wheat growing in Minnesota and
the surrounding territory as has as yet never been experienced. A
million families of immigrants would pour into the great Northwest
within the next twenty to twenty-five years. They would take up all
the existing vacant lands of Minnesota and the Dakotas. The lands
suitable for irrigation in these States and in Montana would be set
to growing wheat. The wave of humanity anxious to raise wheat for
a dollar a bushel in London would sweep past the boundaries of the
four States mentioned, and carry the cultivation of that cereal all
over Manitoba, Assiniboia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. In these four
British provinces and in the four American States, dollar wheat in
London would in twenty years open more acres of good land to wheat
than are now subject to the plow within their borders. Even then the
beginning only would have been made to the possibilities of wheat
culture in the British Northwest. Settlements would not have extended
as far north as St. Petersburg in Russia; neither would settlers
have trenched upon the lands with a climate as severe as that of the
Russian metropolis.
"The foregoing is a brief statement of what dollar wheat in London
would do for one section of North America in stimulating wheat
cultivation. If that statement is based upon a true conception, as
the writer believes it is, of the possibilities of the American
Northwest, it demonstrates how impossible it will be to maintain
dollar wheat in London for any great length of time in the future.
It also shows that Mr. Atkinson is wrong in not asserting a sure
continuation of that decline in wheat prices which he so fully
predicted in 1880."
_Cost of Shipping Wheat per Bushel from Moorhead, an Interior Point
in Minnesota, to Liverpool._
-------------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-------------
| On May | On July | On August | On September
|27, 1898.| 9, 1898.| 20, 1898. | 17, 1898.
-------------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-------------
| Cts. | Cts. | Cts. | Cts.
| per bu. | per bu. | per bu. | per bu.
Rate, Moorhead to Duluth | 9.30 | 9.30 | 8.70 | 8.70
Duluth elevator and | | | |
inspection charges | 0.80 | 0.80 | 0.80 | 0.80
Lake freight, Duluth to | | | |
Buffalo | 1.40 | 1.25 | 1.25 | 1.75
Elevator charges and | | | |
commission at Buffalo | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00
Canal freight, Buffalo | | | |
to New York | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.75 | 2.50
Elevator charges, etc., | | | |
in New York | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00
Ocean freight, New York | | | |
to Liverpool | 8.00 | 3.50 | 4.50 | 6.00
|---------|---------|-----------|-------------
Totals | 25.50 | 20.85 | 21.00 | 22.75
-------------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-------------
General average, 22.525 cents per bushel.
It will be remarked that Mr. Powers says I am wrong in not asserting
a sure continuation of the decline in the price of wheat which I
predicted in 1880. In setting up one dollar a bushel in London as the
standard of this inquiry, I had no thought that our farmers could be
made happy for the next thirty years by any hope of securing so high
a price. In my predictions in 1880 I said that the time was not then
far off when the farmers of the Mississippi Valley would secure as
large a remuneration from their wheat at thirty-four shillings per
quarter in London as they had been gaining from a previous average
of fifty-two shillings. I might then have fixed the lessened price
at twenty-eight shillings, and at the present time I have a greater
expectation of a reduction in the price of wheat in Mark Lane to less
than twenty-eight shillings a quarter, or eighty-five cents a bushel,
than I had in 1880 that it would so soon reach thirty-four shillings.
I merely adopted a dollar a bushel as an arbitrary standard on which
an abundant supply of bread at low cost would be absolutely assured
to the people of England.
In fact, as I stated before the Royal Commission on Depression of
Agriculture, it is not probable that a reduction in the price of
wheat to forty cents a bushel on Western farms or sixty-five to
seventy cents a bushel in England would stop the growth of this
grain, although it might check an increase. When the price went down
to a very low point on the last excessive crop it is probable that
100,000,000 bushels of wheat were fed to swine and to cattle. It
proved to make better pork and beef than maize or Indian corn, and,
as the price of meat did not decline in anything like the proportion
to the price of wheat, the farmers who thus fed their excess secured
a profit which the sale of the crude grain might not have given.
In this comment Mr. Powers deals with the reduction in the number
of foreclosures in Minnesota. Attention should be called to the
fact that the United States census investigation for which a
million dollars was appropriated, for the purpose of recording
farm mortgages in 1890, disclosed the fact that in the ten great
grain-growing States of the middle West two thirds of the farms were
then free of any mortgage of any kind, and were well stocked; the
incumbrance on the remaining third being less than forty per cent of
the computed value of the mortgaged farms. Since that date several
State investigations have been made, leading to the conclusion
that not exceeding twenty per cent of the farms in these States
are now under any incumbrance of any kind. In the more prosperous
parts of Minnesota and other wheat sections since the substitution
of intelligent and varied agriculture for the single wheat crop,
foreclosures have almost ceased, such as do occur being attributed to
special causes; while such is the abundance of capital accumulated in
this section that the rates of interest on safe investments, which
but a few years since were nearly double those prevailing in the
seaboard commercial cities, are now about even. When certain causes
lately produced a short stringency in the money markets of the East,
remittances were made from these Western cities for investment in
Eastern commercial paper.
In regard to wheat production at a fixed price in London, the
Commissioner of Agriculture and Labor of North Dakota remarks: "Wheat
at one dollar per bushel in London would net the North Dakota farmer
on the average about seventy-five cents per bushel on the railroad
track. At that price as a standard, every farmer in the State would
utilize all the land he has, and buy up more of the land now lying
idle and in the hands of speculators. It would increase immigration
so that nearly all the vacant Government land would be taken up. We
also have over one million acres of school and State land, of which
at least eighty per cent is suitable for raising wheat. Such a price
would give North Dakota a boom that never had its equal."
A few words may be given to the report from Texas. The Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture states that "the area of arable land of
fair quality, including pasture that might be put under the plow in
this State, is two hundred thousand square miles; about one hundred
thousand square miles suitable for wheat and other grains lying north
of parallel 31°; about one hundred thousand square miles lying south
of that line adapted to cotton, sugar, fruits, and vegetables of all
kinds."
An unexpected reply comes from Idaho, as yet insignificant in wheat
production, stating that the potential of that State under the
conditions named might reach 400,000,000 bushels.
Again, from Arkansas, to which State we have looked more for
excellent cotton than for grain, "there are fifteen million acres
of good wheat land; wheat is fast becoming a cash crop, displacing
cotton--the capacity of a considerable part of the land at the
beginning being forty bushels to the acre, which, being much better
than five-cent cotton, is leading the farmers to take advantage of
existing prices."
Time has not sufficed since my questions were sent out for replies to
reach me from Oregon, Washington, and Montana, where the potential in
wheat production is probably equal to that of Minnesota, North and
South Dakota combined.
Sir William Crookes makes reference to the future necessity of
providing fertilizers, a matter to which the closest attention is
now being given by the cultivation of renovating crops. But regard
must be given to the fact that we have the most complete and adequate
supply of phosphate of lime and phosphate of potash in the vast
deposits of bone or mineral phosphates of Tennessee, Kentucky,
and Florida, while again we may look to nitrate of soda as a very
inexpensive source of nitrogen, of which the most adequate supply can
be assured at very low cost. Known methods are also being applied to
saving the enormous waste of nitrogen from our coke ovens and iron
furnaces.
I almost feel it right to apologize to Sir William Crookes for the
presentation of these facts. My function is that of the practical
business man who deals with these economic problems wholly from that
point of view, and not from the high standard of a complete mastery
of the physical sciences.
As I have stated, I happen to have dealt with this question several
times at meetings of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science, and in other ways in Great Britain as well as in this
country. I deem it of the utmost importance at the present time
that the interdependence of the English-speaking people should be
brought into view in the most conspicuous manner. In their relative
production and conditions the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland and the United States are the complement of each other. Their
mutual relation or interdependence is now being recognized, and it
can not be long before many of the legal obstructions to mutual
service will be removed. The people of this country are now passing
through a stage in their economic education closely corresponding
to that through which Great Britain passed between 1840 and 1856
under the wise leadership of Sir Robert Peel, Richard Cobden, and
William E. Gladstone. We move more quickly, not only in acts but in
ideas, than we did fifty years ago. The revolution of ideas which
has followed the revolution of institutions in the Southern States
has made the people of this country into one homogeneous nation. A
revolution of ideas in regard to the conditions of international
commerce will presently bring the English-speaking people of the
world into one homogeneous body governed by the same common law,
the same common principles of action, and the same policy in the
collection of revenue. When thus united, there can be no competition
in the commerce of the world on the part of the continental states
of Europe under their present burdens--the blood tax of standing
armies and navies and the money tax of debts that can never be paid.
There have been within a few months two witnesses to the growing
influence and power of the English-speaking people when united for
the maintenance of commerce and for the conduct of the works of
peace, order, and industry: one is the warning of the Chancellor
of the Austrian Empire, calling upon the states of middle Europe
to unite their forces in order to remain capable of maintaining
government by privilege and taxation by force of arms; the other, the
recent manifesto of the enlightened ruler of Russia, calling upon the
states of continental Europe to disarm, lest they should hereafter
be incapable of competition with the English-speaking people of the
world when they become bound together by a union of mutual service
and by community of interest which without any formal alliance will
give to them the chief control in rendering service by the exchange
of product for product to all other states and nations, to the mutual
benefit of all who are thus joined in the bonds of peace.