WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



of our Egypt,. our Hungary, is destined to continue ? 

 Twenty-three years ago, when I first rode out from 

 the then rising village of Chicago to see the Illinois 

 prairies, nearly every wagon I met was loaded with 

 wheat, going into Chicago, to be sold for about fifty 

 cents per bushel, and the proceeds loaded back in the 

 form of lumber, groceries, and almost everything 

 else, grain excepted, needed by the pioneers, then 

 dotting, thinly and irregularly, that whole region 

 with their cabins. Now, I presume the district I 

 then traversed produces hardly more grain than it 

 consumes ; taking Illinois altogether, I doubt that 

 she will grow her own breacfstuifs after 1880 ; not 

 that she will be unable to produce a large surplus, 

 but that her farmers will have decided that they can 

 use their lands otherwise to greater advantage. Iowa 

 and Minnesota will continue to export grain for per- 

 haps twenty years longer ; but even their time will 

 come for saying, " New-York and New-England (not 

 to speak of Old England) are too far away to furnish 

 profitable markets for such bulky products ; the cost 

 of transportation absorbs the larger part of the cargo. 

 We must export instead Wool, Meat, Lard, Butter, 

 Cheese, Hops, and various Manufactures, whereof the 

 freight will range from 2 up to not more than 25 per 

 cent, of the value." They will thus save their soil from 

 the tremendous exaction made by taking grain-crop 

 after grain-crop persistently, which long ago ex- 

 hausted most of New-England and eastern New- 

 York cf wheat-forming material,, and has since 



