114 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



ures to show the cost of producing cereals on the av- 

 erage American farm are as obviously absurd as it 

 would be to attempt to solve a mathematical problem 

 without fixed, permanent factors. 



Take wheat : No system or method has as yet been 

 attempted, which, if carried out, would show with any 

 degree of accuracy the exact total acreage; the total 

 yield; the amount of home consumption; the amount 

 fed or wasted on the farms and in transit, etc. All 

 conclusions reached have been based upon estimates. 

 In a multitude of these hypothetical problems exam- 

 ined, I fail to find one wherein the ratio of acreage 

 sown to the acreage actually harvested has been taken 

 into consideration that is, any allowance made for 

 the millions of acres every year winter killed, taken 

 by the chinch bug and the Hessian fly, or destroyed 

 by drought and flood, and deduction made for the 

 tremendous loss in labor, seed and use of land result- 

 ing therefrom. 



In my own experience, three out of eight years my 

 wheat winter killed. One crop on account of soil 

 puddling in the spring something I never heard of 

 before failed to produce a single bushel of mer- 

 chantable grain, and only a trifling amount of feed. 

 Two years the yield was above normal two below. 

 The net results being that the total amount received 

 for wheat sold was less than the total amount paid 

 for seed and labor, leaving me nothing for eight years' 

 use of the land or interest on money invested. 



During the last few months, the papers have been 

 full of comments (mostly unfavorable) concerning the 



