UNITED STATES' WHEAT-GROWING CAPACITY. 157 



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 Dictrict in the five years ending with December, 1897, 

 were relatively twenty per cent less than they were in the First Dis- 

 trict 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 be- 

 come 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 sell- 

 ing 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 less- 

 ens 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 in- 

 creased profit in two possible sources: decreased cost of transporta- 

 tion 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. 



