Tlie Future of Agrimltiiral Competition. 747 
winter-killing. For the next three years prices continued very- 
low, the December averages being 77 cents, 687 cents, and 
68-1 cents a bushel for wheat on the farm. These were ruinous 
prices for American farmers, and in the old-settled States the 
wheat acreage fell off to such an extent that all the planting on 
new lands only about balanced it. Aii advance to 87"3 cents a 
bushel in 1888 brought the wheat area once more above 
38,000,000 biTshels in 1889; but the price of the latter year 
fell to 69-8 cents, and the area of 1890 was only 30,087,184 
acres, or nearly two million acres less than it was ten years 
before, while the population of the United States had grown by 
1 2^ millions. During the decade many millions of acres of new 
land were settled, and wheat was grown there as a matter of 
course, no other crop being regarded as so suitable to start with. 
Vet. without dwelling upon the difference just shown, which 
might be regarded as partly accidental, we see that the wheat 
area was, at best, only stationary. 
It would be wearisome to readers to have the details of the 
changes of wheat area in the several States placed before them. 
Nor is it necessary to go into detail. The broad fact of a 
stationary wheat area, with a rapidly increasing population, 
proves that, on the whole, wheat-growing was not found re- 
munerative to American farmers after the market price fell 
below a dollar a bushel, and the farm price lower still. Serious 
depression was felt as early as 1884 in the greater part of the 
country, as stated at the time by American authorities quoted 
elsewhere,' to which readers desirous of details may be re- 
ferred. By 1890, however, a turn in the tide had set in, for 
the market price in the autumn of that year rose above a dollar, 
and the December farm average for the whole country was 83'8 
cents. This gave encouragement to growers, especially as they 
began to hope for a permanent recovery of lost value ; and for 
the harvest of 1890 they increased their wheat area to something 
over 39,000,000 acres, the exact area not having been given at 
the time of writing. 
Turning to the figures for Canada, we find only a trifling 
increase, if any, in the wheat area for the ten years, in spite of 
the settlement of Manitoba and the North-west, which has taken 
place almost entirely within that period. Only 51,203 acres of 
wheat were grow^l in Manitoba in 1881, while 746,058 acres 
were grown in 1890. Yet the acreage in the older provinces 
has fallen off so materially as nearly, if not quite, to balance the 
increase in the newly-settled country, as already stated. In 
' The British Farmer and his Covqyetitors, Cassell and Co. 1888. 
