22 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



of the wheat crop, therefore, makes at once a serious difference 

 in the amount of railway traffic, and is at once registered in the 

 railway earnings. One can see, then, how indirectly a wide devi- 

 ation in the wheat crop, by giving a new turn to railway earn- 

 ings, may affect railway construction and expenditures for railway 

 maintenance, and so in turn may even cause some reverberations 

 in the iron industry. As the wheat crop appeared of primary 

 significance for our foreign trade and the bank reserves of our 

 financial centers, so it takes first rank also from the point of 

 view of our railway and shipping interests. 



Again, we observed that the success or failure of the harvests 

 would affect those occupations in which agricultural products en- 

 tered as a raw material. As for cotton, manufacturing interests 

 will be directly touched by variations in the cotton crop, not only 

 in the cotton mills of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but also 

 in the rapidly multiplying mills of Georgia and the other Southern 

 States. Changes in the corn supply will directly affect cattle- 

 raising, and indirectly will affect the packing interests and the dis- 

 tillers. Changes in the wheat supply will have their direct effect 

 in the centers of the milling industry. The output of each of the 

 crops is thus of great consequence to the business interests of a 

 particular locality ; but it would be extremely difficult, looking at 

 the country as a whole, to estimate the comparative influence of 

 the several crops in this connection. Only a third of the cotton 

 remains for manufacture within the country, while more than two 

 thirds of the wheat and over nineteen twentieths of the corn re- 

 main ; but, on the other hand, cotton passes through many more 

 processes in the course of its manufacture, and occasions employ- 

 ment for much more labor and capital for a given amount, than 

 either of the other products. And, similarly, a somewhat greater 

 proportion of the wheat than of the com passes through a factory 

 or mill, and gives further employment to labor. It appears fatu- 

 ous, therefore, to attempt to decide which of these crops is con- 

 nected the most importantly with other industries as a source of 

 raw material. 



Looking at the question broadly and from all points of view, 

 although the matter is not one upon which a decisive judgment 



