120 Prices and Profits of Agricultural Products. [March, 



speedily made, though he employs no larger capital than the farmer. 

 But it may be said that the uncertainty of f?easons will materially 

 diminish the per cent, of profit: and so it will; hut this risk, after all, 

 is not greater than attaches to every kind of mercantile and manufactur- 

 ing pursuits, in the shapes of fire, flood and unavoidable decay of the 

 commodities. 



Again, as to Barley : This cereal manifests great flexibility of char- 

 acter in its adaptations to climate. It is a native of warm regions, but 

 ripens in great perfection in all our temperate zone. In 1840, we pro- 

 duced 4,000,000 of bushels ; in 1850, 7,000,000 ; and yet a considerable 

 quantity is imported to supply our demand. The average cost of pro- 

 ducing it is 35 cents, its average value 75 cents per bushel, the profit at 

 the rate of 11 3 per cent. 



As to Oats: Of this crop, we produce about two hundred millions of 

 hushcls ! and export none. We consume the whole crop, and need more. 

 The range of estimates shows that twenty bushels to the acre will pay 

 expenses, and that the average yield is about forty bushels to the acre. 

 The profit is, therefore, 100 per cent. 



But, the great agricultural product of America is the Indian Corn. 

 Essentially a "Native American," it seems sturdily determined to make 

 itself perfectly at home in all the zones and latitudes of our conti- 

 nent ; and, truth to say, we find it most cordially welcomed wherever it 

 comes, but, withal, so patriotic, that it refuses to yield its stores when 

 removed from its native republican soil. It attends upon the Mississippi 

 alono- all its mighty flow of three thousand miles from North to South — • 

 flourishing on the deltas at its mouth, and ripening in the mountain 

 vallies at its source ; and its lordly tassels and pennon-leaves are seen 

 rustling in the summer breeze in all its genial journey from the plains 

 of Texas to the mountains of Maine ! The nutritive character of this 

 imperial grain is but just beginning to be known and appreciated by the 

 population of Europe; and since 1849, when impending famine made 

 them familiar with its unpretending merits, they are yearly increasing 

 their demands on our supplies. In Asia, too, the American corn is 

 beginning to be most warmly welcomed, and the three hundred and fifty 

 millions of China's population are eagerly demanding it as an article of 

 food more healthful and nutritious than their own indigenous rice. The 

 foreign demand for this grain is, indeed, but just beginning, and will 

 continue to increase to an unlimited extent. Appropriating to its flexible 

 character an area of territory so ample, the immense aruount of this 

 grain annually produced in our country may not excite surprise ; and 

 yet the crop of 1855, amounting to about eight hundred millions of 



