140 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



VII. 



CORN. 



THE corn crop of the United States exceeds one thousand 

 million bushels a year. The mind can not comprehend the 

 vastness of these figures, but, perhaps, by looking at the 

 matter in detail, we can get some idea of it. It amounts to 

 about twenty bushels for each man and woman and child in the 

 nation. It would load thirty million wagons, with thirty-three 

 and a half bushels each, and these wagons arranged in a pro- 

 cession one hundred to the mile, would encircle the globe twelve 

 times. If loaded on cars, four hundred bushels to a car, it 

 would take two and a half million cars to transport it, or sixty- 

 two thousand five hundred trains, of forty cars each, and these 

 trains, one mile apart, would encircle the globe two and a 

 half times. 



The average yield per acre in the United States, for the 

 eleven years, from 1871 to 1881, inclusive, was twenty-six 

 bushels. The center of production has been for years moving 

 westward, and may finally cross the Mississippi River. The 

 largest yield per acre is found in the New England States, and 

 is accounted for by the fact that the acreage is small and the 

 crop manured and cultivated like a garden. Ohio has long 

 ranked high as a corn-producing State, and during the last thirty 

 years its averages have twice reached forty bushels per acre, 

 and eight times fallen below thirty bushels. Our smallest yield 

 since 1850 was in 1854, when the average was twenty-six bush- 

 els per acre, and the heaviest in 1872, when it was nearly 

 forty-one bushels, and the average for the entire period of 

 thirty-one years is nearly thirty-four bushels. I fully believe 

 that by the adoption of a system of rotation that would give 



