The Grain Producing States of America 



17 



ocean steamers of 3000 tons, drawing 20 feet 

 of water, are ready to meet the grain which 

 has been brought from the West by barge or 

 steamer. With their usual ingenuity and 

 abihty, the Americans have, however, sought 

 to gain a large share of the benefit of this 

 western produce, and have tapped the current 

 at Buffalo on Lake Erie, and at Oswego on 

 Lake Ontario, and by a canal of 569 miles 

 have connected Erie with the Hudson River 

 and New York. A large portion of the 

 western produce thus finds its Avay through 

 the Erie Canal to the East, and more espe- 

 cially to New York as an exporting port. 

 From various causes ocean freights are gene- 

 rally lower in New York than Montreal, but 

 the cost of inland transport from the '\\'est is 

 greater to the fomier than the latter city. 

 There are other water communications of 

 lesser importance. But besides these there 

 are five great trunk lines, of an aggregate of 

 8000 miles, extending to the Atlantic sea- 

 board. And it is by these that in winter 

 grain has to be transported, and not unfre- 

 quently in summer also, when the inland 

 shipping companies are unable to fonvard 

 produce fast enough. The termini of these 

 railway lines are Quebec, Portland, Boston, 

 New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. 

 But mere railway termini can never compete 

 as ocean ports with cities at the mouth of 

 inland navigation. This is seen, even during 

 the past year, in the fact that the Cunard line 

 have withdrawn from Boston to New York ; 

 and a steam shipping company which made 

 an attempt last year to establish a line be- 

 tween England and Boston were glad, after 

 a few months trial, to dispose of their pro- 

 perty at prices immensely below prime cost. 

 We therefore look to New York and Mon- 

 treal as the gi-eat shipping ports for the 

 west. And if Canada be true to her duties, 

 and at once enlarges her canals and locks to 

 the largest convenient capacity for steamers 

 of 800 or 900 tons, Montreal should be the 

 great summershippingportforwestern produce. 

 The great disadvantage of the small-sized locks 

 is, that the produce has to be either carried in 

 small quantities or else transhipped at the 

 canals, in either case adding very materially 



VOL. I. 



to the cost of transport ; but that immense 

 volume of produce will soon burst these 

 narrow channels, and force one for itself 

 to meet the wants of the European markets. 



We had intended to go into much more 

 minute details and statistics, but we fear the 

 difficulty of interesting our farmers in 

 American matters ; and yet they find in 

 American farmers their stimulus, and to some 

 extent their rivals. But has the British farmer 

 much to fear from the western producer? 

 Seriously, we think that he has not. In the 

 first place, the prairie farmer has expensive 

 labour and little skill ; then he has the ex- 

 pense, in many cases no small item, of getting 

 his grain over bad roads, with an imperfect 

 railway system, to Mihvaukie or Chicago. 

 He has then to pay 6s. to 8s. per quarter to 

 get his grain to sea-board. He has ocean 

 freight, varying from 4s. to 8s. a quarter, to be 

 added to previous expenses, before his pro- 

 duce reaches the market, which the British 

 farmer has at his own door. If, with syste- 

 matic farming, a comparative command of 

 labour, the adva.ntage of improved machiner}-, 

 artificial manures, and a ready market, the 

 farmers of Britain cannot compete, and that 

 remuneratively, even when paying compara- 

 tively high rents, with proprietors of small 

 holdings in the far west, working their own 

 lands, then the sooner they turn to some other 

 occupation the better for themselves and for 

 the agricultural world. 



The Norfolk or East-Lothian farmer, who 

 can enjoy the pleasure and satisfaction of 

 viewing the level field of full-eared wheat, 

 swaying in undulating waves beneath a bright 

 sun, giving to the grain a last golden tinge, 

 before the reaper enters on its clattering work, 

 can almost to a nicety tell you that there he 

 will thrash from that field his 50 or his 60 

 bushels an acre. And so long as he can do 

 that, with even a tolerably high rent, he is 

 able to set at defiance all the competition of 

 the Baltic or Black Seas, as well as the not 

 less formidable rival of a young western 

 world, where many will perhaps be astonished 

 to learn that the average yield jDer acre, over 

 the whole wheat-producing breadth, is only 

 about 15 bushels per acre. 



c 



