226 EXPORTING POWER OF MICHIGAN. 



of its 400,000 Inhabitants 8 bushels of wheat, as Indian 

 corn enters there less into the consumption of the 

 people, there would remain a surplus for exportation of 

 1,500,000 bushels. Even this is a large export for so 

 young a State, and naturally leads a foreigner to the 

 idea that the country must be very fertile to raise so 

 large a surplus with so small a population. But the 

 real reason for this surplus is, that nearly the whole 

 population is employed in agricultural pursuits, and that 

 wheat is the only grain they produce for which a ready 

 market can be found, and which can be easily exchanged 

 for the manufactured goods, and West or East India 

 produce, which are necessary to their comfort. 



A question of great importance to the British and 

 New England wheat-growers here suggests itself — Will 

 the large export of wheat from these new States con- 

 tinue to increase, or are there any reasons why it should 

 by-and-by begin to decrease ? So far as I have been 

 able to collect information bearing upon this question, I 

 am decidedly of opinion that, though the quantity of 



at 378,000, the produce of wheat at 8,000,000 of bushels ! the 

 consumption at 3 bushels per head! and the sui'plus of 6,890,000 

 bushels given as remaining for exportation, making Michigan, after 

 Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, the largest wheat-exporting State in 

 the Union. Again, in the same Patent Office Eeport for 1848, p. 547, 

 the population is estimated at 400,000, the consumption at 8 bushels 

 per head, and yet a surplus of four millions of bushels is supposed to 

 remain for exportation. But in opposition to these calculations are 

 the numbers obtained by actual inquiiy in 1848, and published by 

 order of the Michigan legislature in 1849, which show the entire 

 produce of wheat in the State, in 1848, to have been only 4,739,300 

 bushels. 



For such inaccuracies, of course, the compilers of the Reports 

 published at Washington are probably not deserving of blame, so much 

 as their State correspondents, who have a tendency, each of them, to 

 magnify and exaggerate the produce and fertility of his own new 

 region, for the purpose of drawing more men and more capital into it. 

 But their effect, when discovered, is to lessen our faith very much in 

 the other important data which are contained in these very valuable 

 reports, otherwise so creditable to the United States. 



