77 



but notwithstanding the enormous increased production thus 

 made possible, we have been obliged to decrease our average 

 exportation of corn and wheat from nearly one-fourth to only 

 one-tenth of our total production ; and at the same time the 

 average price of these great basic food materials has increased 

 by 52 percent, corresponding approximately to the increase in 

 the value of land in the great corn and wheat states, and to 

 the consequent and inevitable general advance in the cost of 

 living. 



You will remember that the population of the United States 

 has increased 100 percent in thirty years, and without doubt will 

 number more than ninety millions in 1910; but, notwithstanding 

 the great areas of rich virgin lands brought under cultivation 

 in the West and Northwest, and notwithstanding the abandon- 

 ment of great areas of depleted soil in the East and South- 

 east, during the last forty years the average yield per acre of 

 these two great grain crops has not even been maintained ac- 

 cording to the twenty-year averages of the crop statistics of 

 the federal government for the forty years from 1866 to 1905, 

 as reported in the 1908 year book of the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture. 



Shorter periods might be selected which would give apparent 

 indications of a different tendency, but less than 20-year avera- 

 ges are not trustworthy for ascertaining the average yield per 

 acre ; and these two 20-year averages show that the decrease 

 in yield of com has exceeded the slight increase in yield of 

 wheat, much of which, it should be remembered, is now grown 

 on land less than forty years under cultivation. And this state- 

 ment holds not only for the entire United States, but also for 

 the great North Central grain belt, including Ohio, Kansas, 

 North Dakota, and the ten other states lying within that trian- 

 gle. 



Thus, in this boasted "granary of the world," the records of 

 forty years show that the average yield of wheat has increased 

 one-half bushel per acre, while the average yield of corn has 

 decreased two bushels per acre. 



Why should the average yield of corn in the United States 



