GEOGRAPHICAL CONCENTRATION. 17 



the steady increase of population, will be the gradual equali- 

 zation of the cost of production. This will certainly tend 

 toward decentralization. The necessity of a more considerate 

 treatment of the soil, which will force itself, little by little, 

 upon the attention of the western farmer, will probably have 

 a similar tendency. The establishment of state agricultural 

 experiment stations and their liberal subsidization by the 

 national government is another step in the same direction, 

 while the extension of manufactures will, even independently 

 of the growth of population, contribute materially to the 

 same result. 



There is no question that the production of barley in the 

 west has been greatly stimulated by the increase in the brew- 

 ing industry in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and other 

 cities, that industry having now attained such magnitude that 

 in the three cities I have mentioned the consumption of bar- 

 ley exceeds even that of wheat. I am not sure that it is not 

 to the astonishingly high rate at which the domestic demand 

 for barley has kept on increasing that the continued failure of 

 the American farmer to grow a sufficient quantity of that 

 grain to meet the demands of the home market is largely 

 attributable, for while in the fifty years ending with 1890 the 

 percentage of increase in the production of barley in this 

 country was six times as great as that of the increase of pop- 

 ulation, the percentage of increase in the consumption of 

 malt liquors was more than twice as great as that of the pro- 

 duction of barley. 



In arriving at the conclusion that the United States has 

 witnessed the greatest geographical concentration in the cul- 

 tivation of its various agricultural products that it is likely to 

 see, and that while nothing like an equal geographical distri- 

 bution of the areas devoted to particular products is to be 

 expected or even desired, yet that henceforward there will 



