OF AGRICULTURE. 151 



pected to beat all previous records, was lost ; 

 eight to ten bushels per acre of bad wheat were 

 all that could be cropped. The result was that 

 " mammoth farms " had to be broken up into 

 small farms, and that the Iowa farmers (after a 

 terrible crisis of short duration everything is 

 rapid in America) took to a more intensive 

 culture. Now, they are not behind France in 

 wheat culture, as they already grow an average 

 of sixteen and a half bushels per acre on an area 

 of more than 2,000,000 acres, and they will soon 

 win ground. Somehow, with the aid of manure 

 and improved methods of farming, they compete 

 admirably with the mammoth farms of the Far 

 West. 



In fact, over and over again it was pointed 

 out, by Schaeffle, Semler,Oetken, and many other 

 writers, that the force of " American competi- 

 tion " is not in its mammoth farms, but in the 

 countless small farms upon which wheat is grown 

 in the same way as it is grown in Europe that 

 is, with manuring but with a better organised 

 production and facilities for sale, and without be- 

 ing compelled to pay to the landlord a toll of one- 

 third part, or more, of the selling price of each 

 quarter of wheat. However, it was only after I 

 had myself made a tour in the prairies of Mani- 

 toba in 1897, and those of Ohio in 1901, that I 

 could realise the full truth of the just-mentioned 



