418 First European Journey 



of Carleton's foresight, explorations, v/orkmanship, and struggles 

 against strong opposition, Smith told almost in the form of a 

 story how one man's vision became a reality and thus westwardly 

 extended " our wheat belt several hundred miles over many 

 degrees of latitude. . . . The end is nowhere in sight," he 

 prophesied. 



From small beginnings six or seven years ago the durum wheat crop of 

 the United States has increased steadily until last year [1905] it amounted 

 to twenty million bushels, and this year to fifty million bushels, largely 

 grown on semi-arid land where ordinary wheats will not grow. ... In 

 passing it is interesting to note that some of these wheats are also very 

 resistant to rust {Fiiccinia graminis, Puccinia Rubigo-vera) ; one variety is 

 absolutely resistant. 



Smith regarded this as " one of the most brilliant of [the 

 Department's} economic achievements." This was saying much 

 since some of its foreign plant introductions — grasses and forage 

 plants, rice from Japan, cotton from Egypt, the Smyrna type 

 fig, dates, vegetables, oats, rye, barley, buckwheat, and many 

 other crops — had either established whole new industries or so 

 revitalized and expanded existing industries as each of them- 

 selves to reimburse for their importation cost, some to pay for 

 the cost of the entire work of the office of seed and plant 

 introduction. Chief Jared Gage Smith of this office in 1900 

 volunteered the opinion that from Turkey wheat from Russia, 

 the Washington navel orange from Brazil, or sorghum and 

 Kafir corn from Africa and China, so many millions of dollars 

 had been realized as to be sufficient to defray " the cost of the 

 whole work of the Department of Agriculture since its incep- 

 tion." ^^ The Swedish Select oat proved to be of outstanding 

 value at one time. Wheats were imported not alone from Russia, 

 but from Hungary, southern Europe, Australia, and the Orient as 

 well. Carleton's macaroni or hard wheats were, however, the 

 most valuable. This work, and that of reclaiming large areas of 

 otherwise unusable lands by crops resistant to alkali and drought, 

 proved abundantly beneficial to the national economy. Another 

 such crop which Smith mentioned was the date palm, imported 

 for the Department by Walter T. Swingle and at that time 



"^ Commercial plant introduction, Yearbook of the U. S. Dep't of Agric. for 1900: 

 131-144, at p. 133. 



