10 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



ning to set boundaries to the westward march of wheat. But a notable dis- 

 covery had been made. Given modern milling conditions, the best bread 

 wheats were not the soft wheats long favored by eastern farmers and 

 millers but the hard wheats of high gluten content that could be produced 

 only in regions of limited rainfall. This discovery, together with the intro- 

 duction and improvement of turkey red, a variety of Russian hard winter 

 wheat, had much to do with the rapid expansion of the hard winter wheat 

 belt into western Kansas, the Oklahoma Panhandle, and northern Texas. 

 As time went on, it became customary in the manufacture of bread flour 

 either to use the hard wheats exclusively or to mix them with the soft 

 winter wheats grown in Missouri, Illinois, and many eastern states. In 

 times of shortage in the American hard wheat crop, millers sometimes 

 felt obliged to import Canadian hard wheat, despite the tariff. 9 



There was a considerable difference in the methods by which spring 

 wheat and winter wheat were produced. The spring wheat grower sowed 

 his grain as early in the spring as he could and then harvested his crop 

 from TOO to no days later. Winter wheat was sown in September or Octo- 

 ber and harvested the following June or July, thus requiring a ten-month 

 season. In general, the winter wheat growers tended to be better farmers 

 than the spring wheat growers, but the short work year was common to 

 both. Conceivably, as one writer has put it, the wheat farmer could "put 

 in a crop during a two- or three-week period in the fall or spring and 

 harvest it in a like period during the summer or autumn ; leaving at least 

 ten months of the year free for vacation or other pursuits." 1 



The third principal type of economy upon which farmers of the western 

 Middle West came to depend was the dairy industry. The rapid expansion 

 of dairy farming was due principally to the demand of the great new 

 urban centers for milk. Indeed, the new city population meant not only 

 new milk customers, but as time went on it meant also more milk per 

 customer. Educational campaigns changed the food habits of city dwellers 

 and in particular taught them the virtues of the "perfect food," milk. 



9. James C. Malin, Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas (Lawrence, 

 Kans., 1944), pp. 188-209, 2 54- 



10. Edwin G. Nourse and Others, America's Capacity to Produce (Washington, 

 1934), p. 39; Theodore Saloutos, "Farmer Movements since 1902" (unpublished 

 doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1940), p. 3. 



