76 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



quent reports of Mr. J. R. Dodge. It appears from 

 these works that the fertility of the American soil had 

 been grossly exaggerated, as the masses of wheat which 

 America sends to Europe from its north-western farms 

 are grown on a soil the natural fertility of which is not 

 higher, and often lower, than the average fertility of the 

 unmanured European soil. The Casselton farm in 

 Dakota, with its twenty bushels per acre, is an excep- 

 tion ; while the average crop of the chief wheat-growing 

 States in the West is only from eleven to twelve bushels. 

 If we wish to find a fertile soil in America, and crops 

 of from thirty to forty bushels, we must go to the old 

 Eastern States, where the soil is made by man's hands.* 

 But we shall not find it in the Territories, which are 

 satisfied with crops of from eight to nine bushels. The 

 same is true with regard to the American supplies of 

 meat. Schaeffle has pointed out that the great mass of 

 live stock which we see in the census of cattle in the 

 States is not reared in the prairies, but in the stables 

 of the farms, in the same way as in Europe ; as to the 

 prairies, we find on them only one-eleventh part of the 

 American horned cattle, one-fifth of the sheep and one- 

 twenty-first of the pigs.t " Natural fertility " being thus 

 out of question, we must look for social causes ; and we 

 have them, for the Western States, in the cheapness of 

 land and a proper organisation of production ; and for 

 the Eastern States in the rapid progress of intensive 

 high farming. 



It is evident that the methods of culture must vary 

 according to different conditions. In the vast prairies 



* L. de Lavergne pointed out as far back as forty years ago that the 

 States are the chief importers of guano. In 1854 they imported it almost 

 to the same amount as this country, and they had, moreover, sixty-two 

 manufactories of guano which supplied it to the amount of sixteen times 

 the imports. Compare also Ronna's L' agriculture aux Etats Unis, 1881 ; 

 Lecouteux, Le ble ; and J. R. Dodge's Annual Report of the American 

 Department of Agriculture for 1885 and 1886. Schaeffle's work is also 

 summed up in Schmoller's Jahrbuch. 



f See also J. R. Dodge's Farm and Factory, New York, 1884 





