GEOGRAPHICAL CONCENTRATION. 15 



older-settled states, but is, on the contrary, growing steadily 

 even in the newer regions west of the Mississippi river. 

 Eight years ago I watched its beginnings in Minnesota and 

 Dakota, and in a series of letters on the agriculture of those 

 states, which were given a somewhat extensive circulation by 

 the management of one of the railroads of that region, I took 

 occasion to urge upon the northwestern farmer the advantage 

 to be derived from a greater diversification of his industry. 

 How far those recommendations, taken up and reinforced as 

 they were by leading agriculturists, contributed to bring 

 about the change that has since taken place will never be 

 known, but not only did the census of 1890 find in Minnesota 

 an astonishing development of the livestock and dairy indus- 

 tries, but the large area of 6,297,044 acres devoted to the 

 cultivation of corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, and buckwheat 

 in that state was found to be more evenly distributed among" 

 those different cereals than was the cereal acreage of any 

 other state in the Union. It is only a few years since in the 

 great wheat belt of North Dakota it was impossible to pro- 

 cure butter, cheese, eggs or fruit that had not been brought 

 hundreds of miles from some leading produce market or some 

 agricultural district that was not so completely given up to 

 a single branch of the industry. Now, however, all this is 

 changed and mixed farming is in the ascendant. This is 

 equally true of the states west of the Missouri river; indeed, 

 when in 1889 so many parts of the country had a short fruit 

 crop, hundreds of carloads of apples, grown on the but 

 recently treeless plains of Nebraska, were shipped both to 

 New York and San Francisco. 



The growing favor with ^'hich mixed farming is regarded 

 is not, however, due exclusively to the large and increasing 

 demand for meat, poultry, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, vege- 

 tables and fruits of all kinds and a variety of other products, 



