680. Noteworthy changes since 1860.—The table shows that in one general respect the export trade of the country remained unchanged; seven items made up nearly two thirds of the immense total of the exports. While the country continued to rely upon a few great staples for the means of purchasing foreign wares, there had been since 1860 some noteworthy changes in the relative rank of the chief items and in the general character of the export trade. Cotton continued to be a leading item, and was still at the head of the list in 1913. In intervening years it had for a time yielded first place to breadstuffs; and another item associated with the agriculture of the northern and western states, provisions, had risen to prominence. This item includes dairy products as well as various kinds of meat, but does not include live animals. In general, however, the agriculture of the country no longer occupied the commanding position which it had once held in our export trade. In 1860 American agriculture supplied more than four fifths of the value of domestic exports of the country; in 1913 it supplied less than half. American industry had become diversified. While the country still depended largely on the raw products of its natural resources for the means of exchange in its foreign trade, it had broadened the field of its activities to include its mineral as well as its agricultural wealth, and had begun to sell an increasing share of its products in the form of manufactured or partly manufactured wares.
681. Change in character of the export trade.—The change in the general character of American export trade through this period can be best illustrated by comparing the whole group of foodstuffs, both raw and manufactured, with the group of industrial products (manufactures for further use in manufacturing, and manufactures ready for consumption). The table of figures shows that in the generation from 1880 to 1910 these two groups practically changed places in the part that they played in American export trade. The value of the total product of agriculture at home did not cease to grow, and indeed rose rapidly and steadily. The home market, however, grew so fast that the surplus available for export remained nearly stationary, and formed a constantly smaller part of the expanding total. The country began to look to its industrial resources to buy what it wanted from foreign lands.
| Exports of U.S. | Foodstuffs | Manufactures | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiscal year | Value millions of dollars | Per cent of total | Value millions of dollars | Per cent of total |
| 1880 | 459 | 55 | 121 | 14 |
| 1885 | 325 | 44 | 150 | 20 |
| 1890 | 356 | 42 | 178 | 21 |
| 1895 | 318 | 40 | 205 | 25 |
| 1900 | 545 | 39 | 484 | 35 |
| 1905 | 401 | 26 | 611 | 40 |
| 1910 | 369 | 21 | 766 | 44 |
| 1912 | 418 | 19 | 1,020 | 47 |
Products of the United States.
682. Reasons for the increase of agricultural exports.—The great growth in the exports of northern agricultural products was due to the improvements in transportation, which opened the markets of the Old World to the food supplies produced so abundantly in the New. There is general agreement that no other part of the earth’s surface presents an area that can compare in quantity and quality of agricultural land with the Mississippi Valley. The larger part of this area still awaited cultivation at the close of the Civil War, and was brought under the plow in the period following it. Good land could be had free of charge by settlement under the homestead laws, or could be bought for prices little above what European farmers had to pay as rent or interest.
683. Improvement of agricultural implements.—The productiveness of American agriculture was furthered in this period by still another factor, the improvement of farm implements and machinery. American ingenuity, always proverbial, applied itself to the problem of getting the largest crops with the least labor, and devised means which were peculiarly suited to the conditions of the country and the times. The automatic reaper, on which inventors had long been working, had become a practical success by the middle of the century, and spread rapidly after its merits had been advertised at the Crystal Palace in 1851. An agricultural writer expressed himself as follows in 1866: “The reaper and mower have become ‘institutions’—a necessity, and no farmer of any standing ignores their use. The machinery for raking and loading hay in the field, and the unloading in the barn and on the stack, the potato digger, the corn cutter, the bean puller, the cultivator, the corn and bean planter and seed sower, threshing machines, corn shellers, fanning mills, straw and root cutters, hay rakes, tile ditchers, &c., &c., though not all of recent introduction, have all been greatly simplified and improved; in short every implement of farm husbandry, from the hoe to the reaper, has undergone various transformations for the better since the late change of the times....”
Every step in advance led to another. The reaper was displaced by the harvester, which accomplished the same results with less labor; and this in turn gave place to the twine binder, which showed still greater efficiency.
684. Wheat and flour.—The leading place among the breadstuffs exported fell to wheat. A large part of the American wheat crop had found its market in the southern States, before the Civil War. The closing of this market by war threw the whole surplus on Europe, and the wheat exports increased actually ninefold from 1860 to 1863. They declined for a time, when the South was opened to trade, but rose again as the soldiers from the disbanded armies and other colonists settled on the western prairies; and about 1880 grew to very large figures. The method of transportation was improved by building great elevators and introducing machinery to handle the grain at all points of transshipment; a system of grading and classification enabled the wheat to be carried in bulk, without regard to small specific lots; and the charges for storage and movement fell greatly. The instruments of modern transportation carried a ton of wheat from Minneapolis to Liverpool for less than it cost a farmer, thirty years before, to haul it by wagon a hundred miles.
For many years after 1860 most of the wheat was exported as grain, and was milled abroad. The introduction of European improvements, producing flour not by the old millstones but by gradual reduction between rollers, established again the reputation of American flour; and about half in value of the wheat export left the country in the manufactured form.