336 THE BOOK OF CORN 



nished 1,680,696,600 bushels. In addition, unofficial 

 allowance was made for other producing- countries, 

 which swelled the total crop of the civilized world to 

 "about 2,300,000,000 bushels." On this basis we pro- 

 duced in that decade about seventy-three per cent of 

 the recorded supply. 



STRONG POSITION MAINTAINED BY UNITED STATES IN 

 WORLD'S TOTAL 



During the decade just past the United States 

 alone has grown in a single year a crop almost equal- 

 ing the world's average production of the decade 

 preceding, yet our proportion of the whole is still 

 slightly under seventy-five per cent, and with our own 

 maize land now practically all occupied, we have 

 evidently reached a point where we may expect a 

 diminishing figure to represent our proportion of the 

 world's supply. Official figures covering all the 

 countries included in the 2,300,000,000-bushel aggre- 

 gate above quoted show an average world's crop, 1895 

 to 1899 inclusive, of 2,759,857,000 bushels, of which 

 the United States contributed 2,257,062,000 bushels, 

 or seventy-five per cent. Comparing these two state- 

 ments of world production it will be seen that in the 

 period ending with 1890 all countries other than the 

 United States made an average annual contribution of 

 619,303,400 bushels, while for the five years ending 

 with 1899 the contribution of the same countries was 

 702,995,000 bushels. 



The crop of the world, as- tabulated by the United 

 States department of agriculture from reported official 

 sources, is more fully shown in accompanying table in 

 Appendix. The federal census figures of 1900, how- 

 ever, covering the year 1899, were eventually reported 

 fin 1902) at 2,666,438,279 bushels, an amount mate- 

 rially greater than that here named. Considering the 



