304 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



From 1850 to i860 New Orleans received on the average 

 approximately 10,000,000 bushels of grain each year. If we say 

 that all of this trade was diverted to the one city of Chicago, 

 an unreasonable assumption, we see that it constituted only 

 from one-third to one-half of the increase of Chicago's trade. 

 The opening of the river in 1863 had no appreciable effect in 

 starting traffic again southward, because marauders on both 

 banks continued to make the route unsafe, and because the 

 Westerners had come to appreciate the speed and directness of 

 the Northern routes. 



It was a striking coincidence that the greater harvests and the 

 loss of the river route southward were so fully anticipated by the 

 railroad construction of the previous decade. In 1850 Indiana 

 had 225 miles of railroads, Illinois 110 miles, Wisconsin 20 

 miles, and Iowa none. In i860 the four states together had over 

 6990 miles of road ready to accomplish the heavy tasks to be im- 

 posed upon them. Whatever might be the increase of the crops, 

 although the river was closed, there were ample facilities to 

 take them to market. Seven new trunk lines from the South, 

 West, and North centred in Chicago, whence three other trunk 

 lines and the Lakes led eastward. This city, which in 1850 

 celebrated the arrival of its first train, was entered during the last 

 part of the war by ninety trains daily. Better preparation in these 

 sections for the strain of war could hardly have been devised. 



At the beginning of the war many feared molestation of the 

 crops ; but when with each succeeding year plenty filled the 

 land, boastings and congratulations were universal. That we were 

 a great agricultural nation in a time of war few public teachers, 

 speakers, or newspapers allowed the people to forget. It was 

 fortunate that the source of our food supply was within our own 

 borders and not in the Confederacy, and that it was never in- 

 cluded within the theatre of war. With food plenty, the doubts 

 and fears that so easily lend themselves to discontent in a time of 

 public crisis had little place. 



Another effect of the abundant food supply, which has never 

 yet been adequately set forth but which, nevertheless, was very 

 important, was its influence on foreign countries. We were a 



