THE INFLUENCE OF CROPS UPON BUSINESS 13 



The three most important American crops are, respectively, 

 com, cotton, and wheat. Corn, although it is grown in greater 

 or less quantities throughout the country, wherever there is 

 tillable land, and although there are few places where it is grown 

 exclusively, is of preponderating importance in the " corn belt." 

 This belt includes the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and 

 Illinois, the whole of Iowa, and portions of Missouri, Kansas, 

 and Nebraska. Cotton, our next most important crop, is much 

 more rigidly restricted. It is produced exclusively in a compact 

 strip of country, running along the Gulf States from eastern 

 Texas, including the Carolinas on the east and parts of Arkansas 

 and western Tennessee on the north. Wheat, like com, is raised 

 to some extent in all or most of the states (twenty-five raising 

 winter wheat, nineteen spring wheat, and some both), but in this 

 case also there is a distinct and comparatively limited area known 

 as the " wheat region " in the north central river basin, and more 

 than half of the wheat raised in the country comes from the six 

 contiguous states, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Kansas, 

 Nebraska, and Missouri, the first three growing spring wheat, 

 the latter three winter wheat.^ 



Among these three crops may occur every conceivable combi- 

 nation of success and failure. The crops of the Southern States 

 may be abundant when those of the Middle West are poor, which, 

 for instance, was the case in 1894, when the cotton yield was 

 enormous and the production of wheat and com fell short of 

 earlier levels. In 1895, on the other hand, the contrary situation 

 occurred, and we had a very short cotton crop concurring with a 

 record-breaking output of com. Although the wheat and corn 

 crops belong to somewhat the same regions, they may, neverthe- 

 less, vary diametrically from each other. You may find a small 

 wheat crop, as in 1885, or in 1896, combined in each case with a 

 record-breaking com crop, or vice versa a record-breaking wheat 

 crop, as in 1901, contemporaneous with a failure of the corn crop. 



And so, while one might presume, from the wide prevalence 

 of agriculture in America and its many interrelations with trans- 

 portation interests, foreign trade, banking, and other occupations, 



^ See the maps in the Statistical Atlas, 1900, plates 154, 156, 158. 



