wheat yield, during these years when much of the 
new lands of the West was being brought under 
the plow, was a little over 25 per cent, while pop- 
ulation increased 33,000,000, or over 63 per cent. 
Obviously supply and demand for bread will not 
keep pace through the working of any law of na- 
ture. 
Moreover, the increase of possible wheat yield 
by increasing acreage is limited. We have no 
longer an unlimited public domain awaiting the 
plow. There will be some grown upon reclaimed 
arid land, though this is mostly devoted to the 
raising of fruit and fodder plants. There will 
be some land drained, and there are a few acres 
of public lands left where wheat may be raised. 
But a denser population makes new demands up- 
on the soil; and it is more likely on the whole that 
the wheat acreage will be reduced, for raising all 
the other commodities consumed by two hundred 
million people, than that it will be enlarged. Noth- 
ing but a material rise in price could accomplish 
this; and we may, perhaps, assume that a steady 
and certain price of one dollar or a dollar and a 
quarter per bushel for wheat may raise our to- 
tal annual product to 900,000,000 bushels, which 
would be fifty per cent more than its present ay- 
erage. This is the extreme limit of probability. 
The country could under present methods do no 
more unless it took land just as necessary for oth- 
er purposes and devoted it to wheat raising. In 
5 
