OUR LEADING AGKICULTUEAL PRODUCTS. 49 



conquest, and afterward it was this same Indian corn, at first des- 

 pised by the Europeans, that made the Northwestern States the food 

 center of America and the Mississippi Valley the gi'anaiy of the 

 world. Wheat was not sufficient to sustain the inhabitants of the 

 world; and the other cereals — ^before maize was added to the list of 

 foods — did not give sufficient relief in time of famine that was sure 

 to follow a short wheat crop. It was Indian corn that gave relief to 

 the underfed population. And if this grain that Columbus found 

 on the island of Haiti were taken from the world, famine and pesti- 

 lence would again stalk abroad in the land, and the prosperity of the 

 world would suddenly be checked. 



—Selected from Brooks' " Story of Corn." 



WHEN CORN WAS KING. 



The farmer who has plenty of corn has both bread and meat for himself and 

 family. Snppose our fathers had had to depend on wheat for their bread. It 

 would have taken them a hundred years longer to i-each the Rockies. Only 

 think of a pioneer in the woods depending on wheat for bread. Corn will pro- 

 duce four times as much as wheat per acre, and requires only one-tenth of the 

 seed to seed it down and only one-third of the time from planting till it can be 

 used for food. Wheat must have well-prepared soil, and be sown in the fall, and 

 watched and guarded for nine months before it is even ready to harvest ; 

 whereas a woman can take a sang hoe in April and with a quart of seed plant 

 a patch around a cabin, and in six weeks she and the children can begin 

 to eat " roastin' ears " ; and when it gets too hard for that, she can parch it. 

 She needs to gather only what she uses for the day ; f(n- it will stand all win- 

 ter, well protected by its waterproof husk. Not so with wheat. It must be all 

 gathered at once when ripe, and thrashed, cleaned, and garneretl. And even 

 then it is hard to get bread out of it without a mill. But a small sack of 

 parched corn, with a bit of salt, was an ample supply for a 10-days' hunt or a 

 dash with Jack Sevier after thieving Indians. Corn was King when I was a 

 boy. 



And SO it was. Corn was king when those hardy pioneers followed 

 Boone into Kentucky and Clark into the prairie lands. Corn was 

 king when Gen. Putnam sent the first body of old Revolutionary 

 soldiers into the Ohio Valley, and it is the power of this king of 

 foods that has sustained the thousands and hundreds of thousands. 



THE FARIVIER'S GOLD. 



Drop a grain of California gold into the ground and there it will 

 lie unchanged to the end of time; the clods in which it falls are not 

 more cold and lifeless. Drop a grain of our blessed gold into the 



13591°— 13 4 



