No. 7. DEPARTMENT O^ AGRICULTURE. 407 



What is done with this immense crop of corn? About nineteen- 

 twentieth of it is fed to stock in this country. About one twentieth is 

 shipped to Europe. Corn is the chief food of about forty million 

 hogs raised annually in this country. 



Wheat 



Winter wheat may be considered second in value and importance. 

 Wheat is one of the most important grains known to man. It has 

 been used for ages by the people of the Old World. Wheat was 

 not known in this hemisphere before the time of Columbus, and 

 our continent now produces more wheat than any other grand divis- 

 ion of the globe. The United States as a nation takes the lead 

 in the production of wheat. A large percentage of the people of 

 Europe eat bread made from our wheat. Millions of bushels of this 

 gi'ain every year cross the Atlantic, and, with the exception of cot- 

 ton, we get more for our wheat from foreign countries than any 

 other crop. Wheat is grown in nearly all parts of the United 

 States, but our best wheat lands lie north of the Ohio and Missouri 

 rivers. Let us note some facts about one of the largest wheat farms 

 in our country: 



On a certain wheat farm in North Dakota there are two hundred 

 and fifty pairs of work horses and mules, two hundred plows, one 

 hundred and fifteen harvesting machines, and twenty threshing 

 machines run by steam. When the grain is ripe, four hundred men 

 are employed to harvest it, and at the time of threshing there are 

 six hundred men at work. Some of the fields contain 500 acres each. 

 The men working in them labor in companies, under mounted over- 

 seers. In plowing the ground, scores of sulky plows, driven by men 

 who sit on the plows, will move across the field together, plowing 

 several acres each round. 



Harvesting on these big farms is a wonderful sight. On such a 

 farm as the one being described, the work of cutting and threshing is 

 done at the same time by a combined harvester and thresher. Some 

 of these great machines are drawn by steam engines ; others bv teams 

 of twenty-five to thirty horses or mules. A single machine with four 

 men will gather and thresh from seventeen hundred to three thou- 

 sand bushels of wheat in a day. 



The next question is, How is the wheat cared for after it leaves 

 the fields? 



This is almost as great a business as raising the wheat. At some 

 of the railroad stations in the wheat belt, and at all the large grain 

 ports of the United States, there are large elevators, or granaries, 

 used for storing the grain until it is wanted for sale. A single 

 elevator often has storage room for more than a million bushels 

 of grain. The elevators at Minneapolis alone can hold almost thirty 

 million bushels at one time. 



The great wheat crop and the location at the head of navigation 

 on the Mississippi Kiver has caused two thriving commercial cities 

 to be built, known as the "Twin Cities of the Northwest" — Minne- 

 apolis and St. Paul. They contain some of the finest business blocks 

 in our country. The two cities now almost join, although their 

 business centers are about ten miles apart. I have just described 

 the greatest belt in the United States, and yet their average yield 

 per acre would not satisfy many of our Pennsylvania farmers who 



