GRAIN TRADE ROUTES IN UNITED STATES. 507 

has moved north and west even more rapidly, owting to its 
having a higher value per given bulk, and consequently a 
greater portability than maize. The rapid improvements in 
transportation, and the improved facilities in handling as 
well as in hauling, have enabled the farmer to raise his wheat 
many hundreds of miles from the eastern seaboard and to 
compete advantageously with the farms lying nearer to the 
markets. In the earlier decades of this century the centre of 
wheat production was in the Atlantic seaboard States, and 
the west was uncultivated and even unpopulated. In 1839 
(census of 1840) the great wheat States were Ohio, Penn- 
sylvania, New York, and Wirginia (including West 
Virginia), and these four States, with a centre considerably 
east of Pittsburg, produced 52,c00,000 bushels, or about. five- 
eighths of the total for the United States, as compared with 
less than 15 per cent. in 1898. 
By 1859 the States standing foremost in the order of 
wheat production were Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and 
Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania ; the north central States 
maintaining their pre-eminence until 1879, and even later. 
By 1879 the trans-Mississippi States entered the competitive 
field of wheat production, and the chief feature of the last 
twenty years has been the rapid growth of the wheat produced 
in these States. In the order of their wheat production the 
trans- Mississippi States rank at present as follows :-— 
Minnesota, 78,400,000 bushels; Kansas, 64,900,000; North 
Dakota, 55,700,000; South Dakota, 42,000,000; Nebraska, 
34,700,000; the five States producing 275,700,000, or over 
40 per cent. of the total crop, as compared with 15 per cent.. 
Miia 7g. and Ts. per cent, 1m, 1859. Of the morth central 
States, Ohio with 42,100,000, Indiana with 38,400,000, and 
Michigan with 34,100,000 bushels, furnish over one-sixth of 
the total production, and maintain a high absolute, if a_ 
decreasing relative, proportion ; but Illinois has gone over 
almost completely to the culture of maizesnd oats. The 
middle Atlantic States, with the exception of Pennsylvania, 
have greatly reduced their wheat production, while that of 
New England has practically ceased. The Southern States 
also furnish now a much smaller proportion of the country’s. 
