AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST 303 



the largest crops in the history of the country up to that time, 

 when in the four states under consideration the wheat crop of 

 83,000,000 bushels was 33I per cent more than in 1859, that of 

 oats 43,000,000 bushels, an advance of 15 per cent. With the 

 exception of the corn crop of 1863, which was damaged by frosts, 

 and the wheat crop of 1864, these figures were maintained, and 

 in some respects surpassed, in 1863, 1864, and 1865. The same 

 is true also for the North as a whole, according to the estimates 

 of the Department of Agriculture. 



In no way, perhaps, is the steady progress better illustrated 

 than by the grain shipments from the city of Chicago. The 

 record of this city is marvellous. Starting in 1838 with a 

 shipment of 78 bushels of wheat, and each year thereafter 

 increasing her shipments, but never before i860 sending out 

 over 10,000,000 bushels of wheat and wheat flour, this new city 

 for each year of the war shipped, on the average, 20,000,000 

 bushels of wheat and wheat flour. Her yearly corn exports, 

 before 1 860 never above 1 1 ,000,000 bushels, averaged during 

 the war 25,000,000 bushels. Of all kinds of grain her shipments 

 in i860 were the largest to that date, 31,000,000 bushels. But 

 in 1 861 these mounted up to 50,000,000 bushels, to 56,000,000 

 bushels in 1862, 54,000,000 bushels in 1863, 46,000,000 

 bushels in 1864, and 52,000,000 bushels in 1865. So it was 

 also for Milwaukee, Detroit, Toledo, and other lake ports, and 

 for Cincinnati, though with no such phenomenal advances. 

 The commerce of the Great Lakes, by which route over 90 

 per cent of this grain was transported to Bufl^alo and other 

 Eastern lake ports, was also very large, nearly twice as large 

 as before 1861, while the grain receipts of Buffalo and New 

 York and the business of the New York railroads and canals 

 showed equal progress. 



The lake ports, especially Chicago, were undoubtedly profiting 

 by the closing of the Mississippi River to New Orleans, for they 

 gained most of the shipments from the interior which usually 

 went to the Southern port, so that the increased shipments of 

 Northern cities and the increased traffrc of the Northern trans- 

 portation routes do not exactly measure the growth of the crops. 



