166 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



more processes of manufacture. England buys only one-third as much of 

 this material from other cotton producers as from us. Her government is 

 making constant efforts to stimulate the culture in India, but it will be many 

 years before any very formidable competition is to be looked for in that quarter. 



The next largest item in what we send abroad is wheat, both in the grain 

 and in flour. During the year ending June 30, 1883, we sold to the amount 

 of $174,703,830. The facts of this trade are most remarkable, and have 

 excited universal attention. Of our cereals wheat is easily king in the export 

 trade. For two hundred years we have had a surplus to sell, the only excep- 

 tions worth mention occurring in the remarkably short crops from 183G to 

 1839, in consequence of which we imported wheat from Germany and Holland. 

 For sixty years wheat has been a leading factor in settling with foreign 

 nations for our imports. The total amount of our exports of wheat and wheat 

 flour for the sixty-three years ending June 30, 1883, was over 2,000,000,000 

 bushels; but more than one-half of this was sent during the last eight years. 

 Expressed in money values the amount was over $20,000,000,000 dollars. 



About one-fifth of our wheat export is now in tlie form of flour, but these 

 proportions have existed only in recent years. Up to 1840 over 90 per cent, was 

 in the form of flour. Grain shipments then began to show a large I'elative 

 increase, and for the fifty-five years closing with 1875, of the total exports of 

 wheat, nearly one-half was in the kernel. In 1880 flour formed only 15 per 

 cent., but it has since risen slightly above that.* 



The recent increase in flour exports, viewed by itself, has been very striking, 

 and some have been led to prophesy that we should once more do the greater 

 part of the milling of our surplus wheat on this side of the Atlantic, but a 

 study of the statistics of the trade will show that it is uncertain business, 

 basing predictions upon the gains of any short period. It appears that 

 "the gains and losses have, from year to year, been playing a sort of see- 

 saw game. * * * That the American milling trade is develop- 

 ing very rapidly, admits of no question; and with this growth there will 

 doubtless continue to be a steady gain in the amount of flour yearly put upon 

 the European markets. One of the most potent causes of the growth of the 

 export flour trade * * '•' is the improvement in the science of 

 milling in this country," by which "our millers have adapted their flours to 

 the wants of the old world," f 



The value of our wheat crop is very much less than that of the corn crop, 

 but the value of corn and corn meal exported, does not much, if at all, exceed 

 one-fifth of that of the wheat exported. However, it is next in importance, 

 and is, in itself, very considerable. As in the case of wheat, so here the 

 growth has been most remarkable in the last eight years, the aggregate value 

 for that period exceeding by over a hundred millions that of the preceding 

 fifty-five years. Perhaps this gain is partly due to the patriotic efforts of the 

 Secretary of State to introduce the American hoe-cake and Johnnie cake to 

 our European friends by means of the corn lunch counter he was reported to 

 have set up at the la^t Paris Exposition. In 1S81-S2 we sold abroad, in 

 the form of bacon, hams, lard, and mess pork, to the amount of $82,500,000. 

 This is properly to be taken into account in estimating our exports of corn. 

 Of corn and corn meal we have recently sent abroad to the amount of about 

 $50,000,000 yearly. 



*I .am indebted for many of the facts stated above, and in other parts of this paper, to an article 

 entitled "Our Exports oi' Breadsluffs," which was published lu the International Review for 

 November. 1881. 



1From the article already referred to, "Our Export of Breadstuffs." 



