328 HISTORY OP THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 







consumed in proportion to their population, there would 

 have remained a surplus of eighty-one million bushels 

 of wheat and five hundred million bushels of cereals. 

 Though the consumption per capita is greater of cereals 

 other than wheat in this region than in the whole 

 country, over two hundred million bushels of grain are 

 received yearly at seven chief points of shipment from 

 the West, while a large quantity besides goes directly 

 to consumers at the East and South, without passing 

 through either of these cities. Probably eight million 

 tons of grain, besides hay and other products of the 

 farm, go forth from this fertile region each year in 

 search of distant markets. 



" Because the surplus is so enormous, distant markets 

 control in a great degree the price of the whole crop. 

 As the water behind a dam never rises far above the 

 level of the overflowing sheet, so the prices of products 

 largely exported do not rise much above the export 

 price, less cost of transportation to the port of ship- 

 ment. That this is true of wheat, of which we export 

 about one-sixth, is well known ; of other grain and of 

 hay we export comparatively little, and yet the surplus 

 at the West is so large, and the demand at the East for 

 consumption or shipment so essential to a profitable 

 sale of the crop, that the Eastern markets rule prices, 

 not only of the quantity forwarded, but of the entire 

 product. A very large proportion of the corn crop is 

 consumed at the West. Yet the average of monthly 

 quotations for the three years 1869, 1870, and 1871, at 

 New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati, the difference per 

 bushel and per cental, and the summer rate for freight 

 per cental from Chicago and Cincinnati to New York, 

 all in cents, compare as follows : 



