106 THE BOOK OF WHEAT 



the cost is from 52 to 63 cents per bushel, or from $10.58 to 

 $12.79 per acre, not including land rent. In Germany the cost 

 is 95 cents per bushel. It costs 65 cents a bushel to raise 

 wheat in India, but according to rather extensive data col- 

 lected by the department of agriculture of that country the 

 cost was exactly half this amount in 1884. The average an- 

 nual cost of cultivating an acre of land in England rose from 

 about $17.45 in 1790 to about $34.90 in 1813. 1 Threshing wheat 

 by flail in that country cost about 8 cents a bushel. By the 

 old system of horse-power machines, it cost about 5 cents, 

 and by steam this was reduced to 2 cents. 



The cost of raising wheat in the United States has not been 

 reduced so greatly in the older wheat states as in the new 

 states of the west, where the level and extensive farms give 

 the greatest opportunity for the use of labor-saving ma- 

 chinery. For example, the combined harvester saves from 3.6 

 to 5.4 cents a bushel on the cost of harvesting with the header 

 alone. 



The Profit on Raising Wheat usually is not large, and it 

 has often been denied that there is any profit at all. 2 Under 

 the most favorable average conditions the bonanza farmers 

 of the Red river valley do not make a net profit of over $3.32 

 per acre, or 8 per cent on the capital invested. 3 In England 

 before the plague of 1332-1333 a lord possessing feudal rights 

 over all the land in a manor made a profit of about 18 per 

 cent on agricultural operations. After the plague, 1350-1351, 

 profits were very low, at the best less than 4 per cent on the 

 capital invested in the estate. Hartlib gives the profit on an 

 acre of wheat in the middle of the seventeenth century as 

 about $9. In order that there may be any profit in raising 

 wheat in Argentina it is said that the yield must exceed 10 or 

 12 bushels per acre. 



Amount of Labor Required. About 1775 in the United States 

 it was 3 days' work to cut 100 bushels of wheat, to bind and 

 "stook" it took 4 days, while threshing and cleaning re- 

 quired 5 days more. In all, it required about 15 days of 

 hard manual labor to get 100 bushels through these processes. 



1 Lowe Pres. State of Eng., p. 153. 



2 Indus. Com., Vol. 10. 



3 Ency. Brit., 10th ed.. 1:217. 



