500 GRAIN TRADE ROUTES IN UNITED STATES. 

the diversion of the flour traffic from Chicago to points further 
north and west. Until 1887 the shipments of flour from 
Chicago had been rapidly increasing, but from this time 
on it has been rapidly diverted. As early as 1882 the millers 
and shippers of St. Panl and Minneapolis had been dis- 
cussing the feasibility of a railroad connecting these twin 
cities with Sault Ste. Marie at the south-eastern point of Lake 
Superior, and by 1888 the Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault 
Ste. Marie Railway was completed. 
The trade via this route grew very rapidly, and preyéd to 
a large extent on the Chicago traffic. But the route which 
has most completely displaced Chicago has been that via 
Duluth and Superior. These cities are situated at the head 
of Lake Superior, and are as near to Buffalo by water as is 
Chicago, while the haulage by rail is far less than in the case 
of Chicago, and the result has been the diversion of the flour 
trade from Chicago to the two western ports. 
The westward movement of the centre of the maize belt has. 
been of the greatest importance in altering the general trend © 
of the maize traffic in the country. 
The movement in the maize belt was originally north and 
west, but the northern limit, set by climatic conditions, has 
been reached, and the movement is now due west. In 1839 
(census of 1840) the States in which most maize was produced 
were Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, these three States. 
furnishing 32 per cent. of the crop, or, including North 
Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, 50 per cent., while the north 
central States (Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in that order) con- 
tributed but 22 per cent., and Missouri but five per cent. of 
the total crop. Now the six southern States named produce 
but a very small fraction of the crop, and even the five north 
central States (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and 
Michigan), which about 1869 were the most important, only 
had 27 per cent. in 1889, while the production in the four 
trans-Mississippi States (Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and 
Nebraska) amounted to 46 per cent. Even beyond the 
Mississippi this western movement of the maize crop centre 
has been progressing. 
The centre of the wheat production of the United States 
