70 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



heart of the wheat-growing industry of this country was near Roches- 

 ter, New York, in the Genesee Valley; but the canal and the railway 

 soon made possible the occupation of the great granary of the West. 

 A multitude of ambitious young men soon took possession of that 

 granary, and the flour-mills were moved from Rochester to Minne- 

 apolis. This is an old story, but the same forces are still at work. 

 The sheep of the Australian bush have become competitors of the 

 flocks that feed upon the green Vermont mountains and the Ohio 

 hills. The plains of Argentina grow wheat for London. Russia, 

 Siberia, and India pour a constant stream of golden grain into the 

 industrial centers of Western Europe, and the price of American wheat 

 is fixed in London. These forces have produced still another kind of 

 competition, namely, specialization among fanners. Localities par- 

 ticularly adapted to special crops are becoming centers where skill and 

 intelligence bring the industry to its height. The truck-farming of 

 the South Atlantic region, the fruit growing of western Michigan, the 

 butter factories of Wisconsin and Minnesota, have crowded almost to 

 suffocation the small market-gardener of the northern town, the man 

 with a dozen peach trees, and the farmer who keeps two cows and 

 trades the surplus butter for calico. These things have absolutely 

 forced progress upon the farmer. It is indeed a "struggle for life." 

 Out of it comes the "survival of the fittest," and the fittest is the new 

 farmer. 



But along with competition has come opportunity. Indeed, out 

 of these very facts that have made competition so strenuous spring 

 the most marvelous opportunities for the progressive farmer. Spe- 

 cialization brings out the best that there is in the locality and the 

 man. It gives a chance to apply science to farming. Our transpor- 

 tation system permits the peach-growers of Grand Rapids to place 

 their crops at a profit in the markets of Buffalo and Pittsburgh; the 

 rich orchards and vineyards of California find their chief outlet in the 

 cities of the manufacturing Northeast three thousand miles away. 

 During the for.ty years, from 1860, the exports of wheat from this 

 country increased from four million bushels annually to one hundred 

 and forty million bushels; of corn, from three and one-third million 

 bushels to one hundred and seventy-five million bushels; of beef 

 products, trom twenty million pounds to three hundred and seventy 

 million pounds; of pork products, from ninety-eight million pounds 

 to seventeen hundred million pounds. And not only do the grain and 

 stock farmers find this outlet for their surplus products, but we are 



