North America — Volume 1

by Anthony Trollope

CHAPTER XI.

CERES AMERICANA.

We stopped at the Julien House, Dubuque. Dubuque is a city in Iowa on the western shore of the Mississippi, and as the names both of the town and of the hotel sounded French in my ears, I asked for an explanation. I was then told that Julien Dubuque, a Canadian Frenchman, had been buried on one of the bluffs of the river within the precincts of the present town, that he had been the first white settler in Iowa, and had been the only man who had ever prevailed upon the Indians to work. Among them he had become a great "Medicine," and seems for a while to have had absolute power over them. He died I think in 1800, and was buried on one of the hills over the river. "He was a bold bad man," my informant told me, "and committed every sin under heaven. But he made the Indians work."

Lead mines are the glory of Dubuque, and very large sums of money have been made from them. I was taken out to see one of them, and to go down it; but we found, not altogether to my sorrow, that the works had been stopped on account of the water. No effort has been made in any of these mines to subdue the water, nor has steam been applied to the working of them. The lodes have been so rich with lead that the speculators have been content to take out the metal that was easily reached, and to go off in search of fresh ground when disturbed by water. "And are wages here paid pretty punctually?" I asked. "Well; a man has to be smart, you know." And then my friend went on to acknowledge that it would be better for the country if smartness were not so essential.

Iowa has a population of 674,000 souls, and in October 1861 had already mustered eighteen regiments of 1000 men each. Such a population would give probably 170,000 men capable of bearing arms, and therefore the number of soldiers sent had already amounted to more than a decimation of the available strength of the State. When we were at Dubuque nothing was talked of but the army. It seemed that mines, coal-pits, and corn-fields, were all of no account in comparison with the war. How many regiments could be squeezed out of the State, was the one question which filled all minds; and the general desire was that such regiments should be sent to the Western army, to swell the triumph which was still expected for General Fremont, and to assist in sweeping slavery out into the Gulf of Mexico. The patriotism of the West has been quite as keen as that of the North, and has produced results as memorable; but it has sprung from a different source, and been conducted and animated by a different sentiment. National greatness and support of the law have been the ideas of the North; national greatness and abolition of slavery have been those of the West. How they are to agree as to terms when between them they have crushed the South,—that is the difficulty.

At Dubuque in Iowa, I ate the best apple that I ever encountered. I make that statement with the purpose of doing justice to the Americans on a matter which is to them one of considerable importance. Americans as a rule do not believe in English apples. They declare that there are none, and receive accounts of Devonshire cyder with manifest incredulity. "But at any rate there are no apples in England equal to ours." That is an assertion to which an Englishman is called upon to give an absolute assent; and I hereby give it. Apples so excellent as some which were given to us at Dubuque, I have never eaten in England. There is a great jealousy respecting all the fruits of the earth. "Your peaches are fine to look at," was said to me, "but they have no flavour." This was the assertion of a lady, and I made no answer. My idea had been that American peaches had no flavour; that French peaches had none; that those of Italy had none; that little as there might be of which England could boast with truth, she might at any rate boast of her peaches without fear of contradiction. Indeed my idea had been that good peaches were to be got in England only. I am beginning to doubt whether my belief on the matter has not been the product of insular ignorance, and idolatrous self-worship. It may be that a peach should be a combination of an apple and a turnip. "My great objection to your country, sir," said another, "is that you have got no vegetables." Had he told me that we had got no seaboard, or no coals, he would not have surprised me more. No vegetables in England! I could not restrain myself altogether, and replied by a confession "that we 'raised' no squash." Squash is the pulp of the pumpkin, and is much used in the States, both as a vegetable and for pies. No vegetables in England! Did my surprise arise from the insular ignorance and idolatrous self-worship of a Britisher, or was my American friend labouring under a delusion? Is Covent Garden well supplied with vegetables, or is it not? Do we cultivate our kitchen gardens with success, or am I under a delusion on that subject? Do I dream, or is it true that out of my own little patches at home I have enough for all domestic purposes of peas, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, beet-root, onions, carrots, parsnips, turnips, seakale, asparagus, French beans, artichokes, vegetable marrow, cucumbers, tomatoes, endive, lettuce, as well as herbs of many kinds, cabbages throughout the year, and potatoes? No vegetables! Had the gentleman told me that England did not suit him because we had nothing but vegetables, I should have been less surprised.

From Dubuque, on the western shore of the river, we passed over to Dunleath in Illinois, and went on from thence by railway to Dixon. I was induced to visit this not very flourishing town by a desire to see the rolling prairie of Illinois, and to learn by eyesight something of the crops of corn or Indian maize which are produced upon the land. Had that gentleman told me that we knew nothing of producing corn in England he would have been nearer the mark; for of corn in the profusion in which it is grown here we do not know much. Better land than the prairies of Illinois for cereal crops the world's surface probably cannot show. And here there has been no necessity for the long previous labour of banishing the forest. Enormous prairies stretch across the State, into which the plough can be put at once. The earth is rich with the vegetation of thousands of years, and the farmer's return is given to him without delay. The land bursts with its own produce, and the plenty is such that it creates wasteful carelessness in the gathering of the crop. It is not worth a man's while to handle less than large quantities. Up in Minnesota I had been grieved by the loose manner in which wheat was treated. I have seen bags of it upset, and left upon the ground. The labour of collecting it was more than it was worth. There wheat is the chief crop, and as the lands become cleared and cultivation spreads itself, the amount coming down the Mississippi will be increased almost to infinity. The price of wheat in Europe will soon depend, not upon the value of the wheat in the country which grows it, but on the power and cheapness of the modes which may exist for transporting it. I have not been able to obtain the exact prices with reference to the carriage of wheat from St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, to Liverpool, but I have done so as regards Indian corn from the State of Illinois. The following statement will show what proportion the value of the article at the place of its growth bears to the cost of the carriage; and it shows also how enormous an effect on the price of corn in England would follow any serious decrease in the cost of carriage.

A bushel of Indian corn at Bloomington in Illinois cost in October, 1861	10	cents.
Freight to Chicago	10	"
Storeage	2	"
Freight from Chicago to Buffalo	22	"
Elevating, and canal freight to New York	19	"
Transfer in New York and insurance	3	"
Ocean freight	23	"
Cost of a bushel of Indian corn at Liverpool	89	cents.

Thus corn which in Liverpool costs 3s. 10d., has been sold by the farmer who produced it for 5d.! It is probable that no great reduction can be expected in the cost of ocean transit; but it will be seen by the above figures that out of the Liverpool price of 3s. 10d. or 89 cents, considerably more than half is paid for carriage across the United States. All or nearly all this transit is by water, and there can, I think, be no doubt but that a few years will see it reduced by fifty per cent. In October last the Mississippi was closed, the railways had not rolling stock sufficient for their work, the crops of the two last years had been excessive, and there existed the necessity of sending out the corn before the internal navigation had been closed by frost. The parties who had the transit in their hands put their heads together and were able to demand any prices that they pleased. It will be seen that the cost of carrying a bushel of corn from Chicago to Buffalo, by the lakes, was within one cent of the cost of bringing it from New York to Liverpool. These temporary causes for high prices of transit will cease, a more perfect system of competition between the railways and the water transit will be organized, and the result must necessarily be both an increase of price to the producer and a decrease of price to the consumer. It certainly seems that the produce of cereal crops in the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries increases at a faster rate than population increases. Wheat and corn are sown by the thousand acres in a piece. I heard of one farmer who had 10,000 acres of corn. Thirty years ago grain and flour were sent westward out of the State of New York to supply the wants of those who had emigrated into the prairies, and now we find that it will be the destiny of those prairies to feed the universe. Chicago is the main point of exportation north-westward from Illinois, and at the present time sends out from its granaries more cereal produce than any other town in the world. The bulk of this passes, in the shape of grain or flour, from Chicago to Buffalo, which latter place is as it were a gateway leading from the lakes or big waters to the canals or small waters. I give below the amount of grain and flour in bushels received into Buffalo for transit in the month of October during four consecutive years.