/8 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



all of a sudden the wheat supplies of mankind. It 

 answered its purpose when large territories of unoccupied 

 land were opened to enterprise. But it could not answer 

 for ever. Under such a system of culture the soil was 

 soon exhausted, the crop declined, and intensive agri- 

 culture (which aims at high crops on a limited area) had 

 soon to be resorted to. Such was the case in Iowa in 

 the year 1878. Up till then, Iowa was an emporium 

 for wheat-growing on the lines just indicated. But the 

 soil was already exhausted, and when a disease came 

 the wheat plants had no force to resist it. In a few 

 weeks nearly all the wheat crop, which was expected to 

 beat all previous records, was lost ; eight to ten bushels 

 per acre of bad wheat were all that could be cropped 

 The result was that " mammoth farms " had to be broken 

 up into small farms, and that the Iowa farmers (after a 

 terrible crisis of short duration everything is rapid in 

 America) took to a more intensive culture. Now, they 

 are not behind France in wheat culture, as they already 

 grow an average of sixteen and a half bushels per acre 

 on an area of more than 2,000,000 acres, and they will 

 soon win ground. Somehow, with the aid of manure 

 and improved methods of farming they compete ad- 

 mirably with the mammoth farms of the Far West 

 /"In fact, over and over again it was pointed out, by 

 Schaeffle, Semler, Oetken, and many other writers, that 

 the force of " American competition " is not in its mam- 

 moth farms, but in the countless small farms upon which 

 wheat is grown in the same way as it is grown in 

 Europe, i.e. t with manuring, but with a better organised 

 production and facilities for sale, and without being com- 

 pelled to pay to the landlord a toll of one-third part, or 

 more, of the selling price of each quarter of wheat 

 However, it was only after I had myself made a tour 

 in the prairies of Manitoba that I could realise the full 

 truth of the just-mentioned views. The 15,000,000 to 

 20,000,000 bushels of wheat, which are exported every 



