148 THE POSSIBILITIES 



twenty bushels per acre, was an exception ; while 

 the average crop of the chief wheat-growing 

 States in the West was only eleven to twelve 

 bushels. In order to find a fertile soil in 

 America, and crops of from thirty to forty bushels, 

 one must go to the old Eastern States, where the 

 soil is made by man's hands.* 



The same applies to the American supplies of 

 meat. Schaeffle pointed out that the great mass 

 of live stock which appeared in the census of 

 cattle in the States was not reared in the prairies, 

 but in the stables of the farms, in the same way 

 as in Europe ; as to the prairies, he found on them 

 only one-eleventh part of the American horned 

 cattle, one-fifth of the sheep and one-twenty- 

 first of the pigs.f " Natural fertility " being thus 

 out of question, we must look for social causes ; 

 and we have them, for the Western States, in 

 the cheapness of land and a proper organisation 

 of production ; and for the Eastern States in 

 the rapid progress of intensive high farming. 



* L. de Lavergne pointed out as far back as fifty years 

 ago that the States were at that time the chief importers of 

 guano. Already in 1854 they imported it almost to the same 

 amount as this country, and they had, moreover, sixty-two 

 manufactories of guano which supplied it to the amount of 

 sixteen times the imports. Compare also Ronna's L' agriculture 

 aux Etats Unis, 1881 ; Lecouteux, Le ble ; and J. R. Dodge's 

 Annual Report of the American Department of Agriculture for 

 1885 and 1886. Schaeffle' s work was also summed up in 

 Schmoller's Jahrbuch. 



f See also J. R. Dodge's Farm and Factory, New York, 1884. 



