4 GEOGRAPHICAL CONCENTRATION. 



which has made this country facile princeps among the na- 

 tions of the world. 



The agriculture of a country, the capabilities of which are 

 so enormous that its annual production of a single cereal is 

 measured by billions of bushels, and which in the ten years 

 ending June 30, 1890, sold $5,639,203,272 worth of its agri- 

 cultural products to other nations after supplying the require- 

 ments of its own large population ; a country whose climatic 

 range extends from the sub-Arctic to the sub-Tropic, modi- 

 fied by the greatest lake system and two of the greatest 

 mountain ranges in the world, and with a mean annual rain- 

 fall varying from 1.85 inches in its most arid region to 105. 25 

 inches in its region of greatest precipitation ; a country occu- 

 pied by so composite a people that in three of the greatest 

 agricultural states in the Union, including the state that 

 stands first in the production of wheat, the foreign-born ele- 

 ment in the agricultural population outnumbers the native, 

 while in another great agricultural state there are 136 negroes 

 to every 100 whites, the agriculture of such a country 

 necessarily affords an interesting and instructive field of in- 

 vestigation, from whatever point of view it is considered. 

 Among its various features of interest is that tendency to 

 geographical concentration which has always characterized 

 the cultivation of many of the principal products of the soil. 

 In speaking of geographical concentration as an historic fea- 

 ture of American agriculture I do not refer to those limita- 

 tions of the area of production which are imposed by the 

 conditions of climate, as in the case of the sub-tropical pro- 

 ducts of the states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, but only 

 to products that have a wide climatic range, such as maize, 

 wheat, oats, barley, rye, tobacco, flax, hemp, hops, etc. , the 

 cultivation of which in the United States has always been 

 distinguished for its geographical concentration. 



