UNITED STATES' WHEAT-GROWING CAPACITY. 153 



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 Avell 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 cultiva- 

 tion an average crop of twenty bushels to the acre would be assured, 

 in many sections much more. One hundred and twenty-eight mil- 

 lion 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 tribu- 

 taries; 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 with- 

 out regard to the instant competition which would come from Cali- 

 fornia (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), 



