i 5 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 informa- 

 tion 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 exhaust- 

 ive 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 refer- 

 ence 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 Con- 

 gressional District. The lands of this district are situated about two 



