THE DEVELOPMENT OF WHEAT CULTURE IN NORTH AMERICA. 235i, 
ever, thus measured. It is easy to conceive of a time in no distant 
future when the United States might raise 800,000,000 bushels and 
consume 700,000,000, while Canada might at the same time raise 
400,000,000 and consume 100,000,000 bushels. It is easy to see that 
the northern country would even then hold a threefold more important 
place in the public markets. of the world than her neighbour, even 
while the North American centre of production remained at some 
distance south of the international boundary. 
The movement of wheat growing has been from east to west, and 
will now be from south to north. This is largely the movement of 
history, and follows the migration of the frontier in our continent. 
The direction has thus had an historical origin, and both the direction 
and the rate of movement have been conditioned by the development 
of transportation. The more special and local reasons for the shifting 
of wheat lend themselves to inquiry, and have perhaps been nowhere 
else so well discussed as by. Mr. C. W. Thompson.? The subject 
of study is the shifting of wheat culture in Minnesota. This cereal 
has: gone from south-east to north-west in that State. Olmstead 
County, in the south-east, is as fertile and as capable of large crops 
of wheat as the best Red River lands, and is as good now as it was in 
1870. The one region is as favourable in soil and climate and as suited 
for the use of machinery as the other. But as population increases 
and land grows in value more must be allowed for rental, or interest 
on investment, and intensive, diversified farming replaces the more 
extensive wheat farming. The bonanza wheat farms tend to break up 
as the population grows, for with skinning processes and much hired 
help in one part of the year, and, it may well be added, with no stock 
or rotation of crops, there is no way to enrich the land, cultivate 
thoroughly, and thus increase the product of an acre. The acre must 
be put to crops and tillage that will enable it to bear its greater burden, 
and wheat must go elsewhere. Moreover, the best returns accrue where 
one man, the owner, and one set of farm machinery do most of the work. 
Such farms contain 160 to 170 acres of land. Hence not only does 
diversified farming drive out wheat in some measure, but the smaller 
wheat farm drives out the great bonanza farm with its thousands of 
acres, its enormous machines, and its small army of labourers. 
It is therefore an error to think that wheat must pass or be in 
jeopardy with the elimination of the frontier. This has already been 
seen in the sustained wheat growth of the old North-West. In the 
census year 1899 more wheat was raised on farms of 100 to 175 acres 
than on those of any other specified size. Less than one-eleventh of the 
country’s wheat grew on farms exceeding 1,000 acres. Almost one-fifth 
was raised on farms of less than 100 acres. Taking the whole country, 
the yield per acre on the smaller farms was slightly greater than the 
yield on the large farms, notwithstanding the fact that the latter were 
chiefly areas of virgin soil. Thus, while wheat has figured largely as 
a pioneer crop, to be grown on free or cheap land, these conditions are 
not so important as is supposed, and an old, highly cultivated country 
like France, raising nearly all its own wheat, offers the best of object 
Jessons. Dondlinger,? while holding that much land will become too 
* Quart. Jour. of Econ., vol. xviii, 1904, p. 570. 
* The Bogk of Wheat, p. 303, 4 
