North America — Volume 1

by Anthony Trollope

October,	1858	4,429,055	bushels.
"	1859	5,523,448	"
"	1860	6,500,864	"
"	1861	12,483,797	"

In 1860, from the opening to the close of navigation, 30,837,632 bushels of grain and flour passed through Buffalo. In 1861 the amount received up to the 31st of October was 51,969,142 bushels. As the navigation would be closed during the month of November, the above figures may be taken as representing not quite the whole amount transported for the year. It may be presumed the 52,000,000 of bushels, as quoted above, will swell itself to 60,000,000. I confess that to my own mind statistical amounts do not bring home any enduring idea. Fifty million bushels of corn and flour simply seems to mean a great deal. It is a powerful form of superlative, and soon vanishes away, as do other superlatives in this age of strong words. I was at Chicago and at Buffalo in October 1861. I went down to the granaries, and climbed up into the elevators. I saw the wheat running in rivers from one vessel into another, and from the railroad vans up into the huge bins on the top stores of the warehouses;—for these rivers of food run up hill as easily as they do down. I saw the corn measured by the forty bushel measure with as much ease as we measure an ounce of cheese, and with greater rapidity. I ascertained that the work went on, week day and Sunday, day and night incessantly; rivers of wheat and rivers of maize ever running. I saw the men bathed in corn as they distributed it in its flow. I saw bins by the score laden with wheat, in each of which bins there was space for a comfortable residence. I breathed the flour, and drank the flour, and felt myself to be enveloped in a world of breadstuff. And then I believed, understood, and brought it home to myself as a fact, that here in the corn lands of Michigan, and amidst the bluffs of Wisconsin, and on the high table plains of Minnesota, and the prairies of Illinois, had God prepared the food for the increasing millions of the Eastern world, as also for the coming millions of the Western.

I do not find many minds constituted like my own, and therefore I venture to publish the above figures. I believe them to be true in the main, and they will show, if credited, that the increase during the last four years has gone on with more than fabulous rapidity. For myself I own that those figures would have done nothing unless I had visited the spot myself. A man cannot, perhaps, count up the results of such a work by a quick glance of his eye, nor communicate with precision to another the conviction which his own short experience has made so strong within himself;—but to himself seeing is believing. To me it was so at Chicago and at Buffalo. I began then to know what it was for a country to overflow with milk and honey, to burst with its own fruits, and be smothered by its own riches. From St. Paul down the Mississippi by the shores of Wisconsin and Iowa,—by the ports on Lake Pepin,—by La Crosse, from which one railway runs eastward,—by Prairie du Chien the terminus of a second,—by Dunleath, Fulton, and Rock Island from whence three other lines run eastward, all through that wonderful State of Illinois—the farmers' glory,—along the ports of the great lakes,—through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and further Pennsylvania, up to Buffalo, the great gate of the western Ceres, the loud cry was this—"How shall we rid ourselves of our corn and wheat?" The result has been the passage of 60,000,000 bushels of breadstuffs through that gate in one year! Let those who are susceptible of statistics ponder that. For them who are not I can only give this advice:—Let them go to Buffalo next October, and look for themselves.

In regarding the above figures and the increase shown between the years 1860 and 1861, it must of course be borne in mind that during the latter autumn no corn or wheat was carried into the Southern States, and that none was exported from New Orleans or the mouth of the Mississippi. The States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have for some time past received much of their supplies from the north-western lands, and the cutting off of this current of consumption has tended to swell the amount of grain which has been forced into the narrow channel of Buffalo. There has been no southern exit allowed, and the southern appetite has been deprived of its food. But taking this item for all that it is worth,—or taking it, as it generally will be taken, for much more than it can be worth,—the result left will be materially the same. The grand markets to which the western States look and have looked are those of New England, New York, and Europe. Already corn and wheat are not the common crops of New England. Boston, and Hartford, and Lowell are fed from the great western States. The State of New York, which, thirty years ago, was famous chiefly for its cereal produce, is now fed from these States. New York city would be starved if it depended on its own State; and it will soon be as true that England would be starved if it depended on itself. It was but the other day that we were talking of free trade in corn as a thing desirable, but as yet doubtful;—but the other day that Lord Derby who may be Prime Minister to-morrow, and Mr. Disraeli who may be Chancellor of the Exchequer to-morrow, were stoutly of opinion that the corn laws might be and should be maintained;—but the other day that the same opinion was held with confidence by Sir Robert Peel, who, however, when the day for the change came, was not ashamed to become the instrument used by the people for their repeal. Events in these days march so quickly that they leave men behind, and our dear old Protectionists at home will have grown sleek upon American flour before they have realized the fact that they are no longer fed from their own furrows.

I have given figures merely as regards the trade of Buffalo; but it must not be presumed that Buffalo is the only outlet from the great corn lands of Northern America. In the first place no grain of the produce of Canada finds its way to Buffalo. Its exit is by the St. Lawrence, or by the Grand Trunk Railway, as I have stated when speaking of Canada. And then there is the passage for large vessels from the Upper Lakes, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Erie, through the Welland Canal, into Lake Ontario, and out by the St. Lawrence. There is also the direct communication from Lake Erie, by the New York and Erie railway to New York. I have more especially alluded to the trade of Buffalo, because I have been enabled to obtain a reliable return of the quantity of grain and flour which passes through that town, and because Buffalo and Chicago are the two spots which are becoming most famous in the cereal history of the western States.

Everybody has a map of North America. A reference to such a map will show the peculiar position of Chicago. It is at the south or head of Lake Michigan, and to it converge railways from Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. At Chicago is found the nearest water carriage which can be obtained for the produce of a large portion of these States. From Chicago there is direct water conveyance round through the lakes to Buffalo at the foot of Lake Erie. At Milwaukee, higher up on the lake, certain lines of railway come in, joining the lake to the Upper Mississippi, and to the wheat-lands of Minnesota. Thence the passage is round by Detroit which is the port for the produce of the greatest part of Michigan, and still it all goes on towards Buffalo. Then on Lake Erie there are the ports of Toledo, Cleveland, and Erie. At the bottom of Lake Erie, there is this city of corn, at which the grain and flour are transhipped into the canal boats and into the railway cars for New York; and there is also the Welland Canal, through which large vessels pass from the upper lakes, without transhipment of their cargo.

I have said above that corn—meaning maize or Indian corn—was to be bought at Bloomington in Illinois for 10 cents or fivepence a bushel. I found this also to be the case at Dixon—and also that corn of inferior quality might be bought for fourpence; but I found also that it was not worth the farmers' while to shell it and sell it at such prices. I was assured that farmers were burning their Indian corn in some places, finding it more available to them as fuel, than it was for the market. The labour of detaching a bushel of corn from the hulls or cobs is considerable, as is also the task of carrying it to market. I have known potatoes in Ireland so cheap that they would not pay for digging and carrying away for purposes of sale. There was then a glut of potatoes in Ireland; and in the same way there was in the autumn of 1861 a glut of corn in the western States. The best qualities would fetch a price, though still a low price; but corn that was not of the best quality was all but worthless. It did for fuel, and was burnt. The fact was that the produce had re-created itself quicker than mankind had multiplied. The ingenuity of man had not worked quick enough for its disposal. The earth had given forth her increase so abundantly that the lap of created humanity could not stretch itself to hold it. At Dixon in 1861 corn cost fourpence a bushel. In Ireland in 1848, it was sold for a penny a pound, a pound being accounted sufficient to sustain life for a day,—and we all felt that at that price food was brought into the country cheaper than it had ever been brought before.

Dixon is not a town of much apparent prosperity. It is one of those places at which great beginnings have been made, but as to which the deities presiding over new towns have not been propitious. Much of it has been burnt down, and more of it has never been built up. It had a straggling, ill-conditioned, uncommercial aspect, very different from the look of Detroit, Milwaukee, or St. Paul. There was, however, a great hotel there, as usual, and a grand bridge over the Rock River, a tributary of the Mississippi which runs by or through the town. I found that life might be maintained on very cheap terms at Dixon. To me as a passing traveller the charges at the hotel were, I take it, the same as elsewhere. But I learned from an inmate there that he with his wife and horse were fed and cared for and attended for two dollars or 8s. 4d. a day. This included a private sitting-room, coals, light, and all the wants of life—as my informant told me—except tobacco and whiskey. Feeding at such a house means a succession of promiscuous hot meals as often as the digestion of the patient can face them. Now I do not know any locality where a man can keep himself and his wife, with all material comforts, and the luxury of a horse and carriage, on cheaper terms than that. Whether or no it might be worth a man's while to live at all at such a place as Dixon is altogether another question.

We went there because it is surrounded by the prairie, and out into the prairie we had ourselves driven. We found some difficulty in getting away from the corn, though we had selected this spot as one at which the open rolling prairie was specially attainable. As long as I could see a corn-field or a tree I was not satisfied. Nor indeed was I satisfied at last. To have been thoroughly on the prairie and in the prairie I should have been a day's journey from tilled land. But I doubt whether that could now be done in the State of Illinois. I got out into various patches and brought away specimens of corn;—ears bearing sixteen rows of grain, with forty grains in each row; each ear bearing a meal for a hungry man.

At last we did find ourselves on the prairie, amidst the waving grass, with the land rolling on before us in a succession of gentle sweeps, never rising so as to impede the view, or apparently changing in its general level,—but yet without the monotony of flatness. We were on the prairie, but still I felt no satisfaction. It was private property—divided among holders and pastured over by private cattle. Salisbury plain is as wild, and Dartmoor almost wilder. Deer they told me were to be had within reach of Dixon; but for the buffalo one has to go much further afield than Illinois. The farmer may rejoice in Illinois, but the hunter and the trapper must cross the big rivers and pass away into the western territories before he can find lands wild enough for his purposes. My visit to the corn-fields of Illinois was in its way successful; but I felt as I turned my face eastward towards Chicago that I had no right to boast that I had as yet made acquaintance with a prairie.