Millions in Tassel 145 



seventh of all the beet sugar produced in the country is grown 

 there, and the annual wheat crop averages three million 

 bushels. And in the University at Greeley young men are 

 educated to be farmers on the Great American Desert. 



The story of Greeley, Colorado, was repeated with varia- 

 tions in a score of other localities. Towns which began as colo- 

 nies used co-operative measures in raising and marketing crops. 

 With the coming of the railroads, grain elevators were built 

 for the shipment of wheat and corn to the markets in Chicago 

 and elsewhere. Many of these elevators are farmers' co- 

 operatives. 



More than three-quarters of the nation's annual corn crop 

 never leaves the farms, or the localities where it is grown 

 (except on the hoof). It is fed to hogs, to cattle, horses and 

 poultry. More than one hundred million bushels go to the 

 millers to be turned into corn meal and flour, to the distillers 

 to become alcohol, and to the makers of breakfast foods. 



The balance, close to eighty million bushels yearly, becomes 

 the source of our supply of starch, corn syrup, glucose, dextrose, 

 cooking oil. It appears before us in candy, in ice cream, in 

 rayon textiles, in soap, in paper, in chewing tobacco, in bath 

 powders, in fireworks and explosives, in yeast and in gluten 

 feeds for cattle. 



No other grain known to man has so many uses which are 

 convertible into dollars. No other crop grown in American 

 soil supports so many industries, gives employment to so 

 many men and women, accomplishes such far-flung ends. 



It is truly the totem of the American people. 



There is an affinity between it and the American people 

 whose life it has made, and whose destiny it has shaped and 

 shared. These are the secrets it whispers when the leaves rustle 

 in the summer wind tales of Tussore and Kemps working out 

 their freedom by sowing the grain to feed their captors; tales 

 of Cornstalk of the Shawnees and his brother Silver Heels, and 

 the whistle of bullets in the Back Woods; tales of Negro slaves 



