BREAD PLANTS 37 



that each year the crop is bigger, the miracle is 

 repeated, more granaries are filled each time the 

 autumn rolls around. Let us look at a few figures, 

 and try to grasp their meaning. In 1910 our corn 

 crop was worth over $ 1,500,000,000! Four times 

 as much corn as was raised in all the cornfields of 

 all the other continents. A procession of farmers' 

 wagons, each loaded with fifty bushels of corn, and 

 drawn by the farmer's team, would be long enough 

 to reach nine times around the earth. For when 

 a girdle is complete, there would be left in cribs 

 and elevators eight times as much corn as was in 

 that single line of wagons, twenty-five thousand 

 miles long. 



The great corn states are Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, 

 and Nebraska. In 1910, Illinois raised 414 mil- 

 lion bushels, almost one third of the crop in the 

 whole country. Large-eared dent corn is grown 

 in the great "corn belt" of the central states. 

 The yield per acre averages but twenty-seven 

 bushels. Many farmers raise three times that 

 quantity. The northeastern states, that raise the 

 round-grained flint corn, do not have a large acre- 

 age, but the average yield is high, despite their 

 wornout land. Down South the average crop 

 is much lower than in the corn belt, partly due to 

 careless, unenlightened farming. 



