Chicago is the _entrepôt_ for the great prairie region spreading from
the Alleghenies westward beyond the Mississippi. Here grows the grain
making the wealth of the land, and feeding the cattle, hogs and sheep
that are poured so liberally into the Union Stock Yards of the Lake
City. Upon the crops of this vast prairie land depends the prosperity
of the country. Wall Street in New York and the Chicago Board of Trade
are the market barometers of this prosperity, for the prairie farmer,
as he may be rich and able to spend money, or poor so that he cannot
even pay his debts, controls the financial outlook in America. The
traveller, as he glides upon this universal prairie land, east, south
and west of Chicago, viewing its limitless fertility seen far away in
every direction over the monotonous level, as if looking across an
ocean, cannot help recalling Wordsworth's pleasant lines:
"The streams with softest sound are flowing,
The grass you almost hear it growing,
You hear it now, if e'er you can."
Then, as the crops ripen and are garnered, and the wealth of the
prairie is turned into food for the world, there comes with the
advancing autumn the ripening of the greatest crop of America, and the
mainstay of the country, the Indian corn. It is wonderful to think
that the first corn crop of the United States planted by white men at
Jamestown, Virginia, on a field of forty acres in 1608, has grown to
an annual yield approximating twenty-three hundred million bushels.
This prolific crop is the banner product of the great prairie, and
Whittier in his "Corn Song" has recorded its glories:
"Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has autumn poured
From out the lavish horn!
"Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;
"We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest fields with snow.
"Through vales of grass and meads of flowers,
Our plows their furrows made,
While on the hills, the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.
"We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.
"All through the long bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and fair,
And waved in hot midsummer's noon
Its soft and yellow hair.
"And now, with autumn's moonlit eves,
Its harvest time has come,
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.
"There, richer than the fabled gift
Apollo showered of old,
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,
And knead its meal of gold.
"Let vapid idlers loll in silk
Around their costly board;
Give us the bowl of samp and milk
By homespun beauty poured!
"Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth
Sends up its smoky curls,
Who will not thank the kindly earth,
And bless our farmer girls!
"Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,
The wheat-field to the fly;
"But let the good old corn adorn
The hills our fathers trod;
Still let us for his golden corn
Send up our thanks to God!"