UNITED STATES' WHEAT-GROWING CAPACITY. 161 



good wheat land; wheat is fast becoming a cash crop, displacing cot- 

 ton — 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 re- 

 plies 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 de- 

 posits of bone or mineral phosphates of Tennessee, Kentucky, and 

 Florida, while again we may look to nitrate of soda as a very inex- 

 pensive 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 busi- 

 ness 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 mast conspicuous manner. In their relative pro- 

 duction 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 interna- 



VOL. LIT. — 12 



