The foregoing text was set in type and one hundred advance proof sheets were supplied, which have been sent by the writer to the Secretaries of Agriculture and the chiefs of the Agricultural Experiment Stations in all the States to which we look for any considerable product of wheat. The replies are so complete and so numerous as to make it impossible to incorporate a full digest of the whole case within the limits of the present article. A supplement will be prepared for a later number of this journal, in which this information will be tabulated. For the present purpose I may avail myself only of a part of the data which have been sent to me.
1. The evidence suffices to prove that there is not a State named above which could not set apart five thousand square miles for the cultivation of wheat in a rotation of four without trenching in the slightest degree upon any other crop. 2. In previous essays, in which I have dealt with the potential of the agriculture of this country, I have very guardedly computed but one half our total area of three million square miles (omitting Alaska) as being arable land, suitable for the plow. The returns now in my hands would render it suitable to increase that area to two thirds, or two million square miles subject to cultivation. 3. The area now under the plow for the production of our principal crops for the year 1897 is given in the table below. If miscellaneous crops be added to these principal crops, the cultivated land of this country does not now exceed, and in fact does not reach, twenty per cent of the arable land, while from the cultivated portion a progressive increase in product may be expected under the impetus of improved methods of farming on lessening areas in each farm.
| Acreage. | Yield. | Product. | Price. | Value. | |
| Per acre. | Bushels. | Cents. | |||
| Maize | 80,095,051 | 23.8 | 1,902,967,933 | 26.3 | $501,072,952 |
| Wheat | 39,465,066 | 13.4 | 530,149,168 | 80.8 | 428,547,121 |
| Oats | 25,730,375 | 27.2 | 698,767,809 | 21.2 | 147,974,719 |
| Barley | 2,719,116 | 24.5 | 66,685,127 | 37.7 | 25,142,139 |
| Rye | 1,703,561 | 16.1 | 27,363,324 | 44.7 | 12,239,647 |
| Buckwheat | 717,836 | 20.9 | 14,997,451 | 42.1 | 6,319,188 |
| All grain | 150,431,005 | 3,240,930,812 | $1,121,295,766 | ||
| Hay | 42,426,770 | 1.43 | 60,664,876 | 6.62 | 401,390,728 |
| Cotton | 23,273,209 | 8,532,705 | 6.78 | 291,811,564 | |
| 216,130,984 | $1,814,498,058 |
| Maize | 125,150 | square | miles; |
| Wheat | 61,660 | " | " |
| Oats | 40,200 | " | " |
| Barley | 4,250 | " | " |
| Rye | 2,660 | " | " |
| Buckwheat | 1,120 | " | " |
| 235,040 | " | " | |
| Hay | 66,290 | " | " |
| Cotton | 36,520 | " | " |
| 337,850 | " | " |
The area under wheat in 1897 was a fraction under forty million acres, or a little less than sixty-two thousand square miles. The high price secured for that crop has led to an increase in land under wheat in 1898 to a fraction under seventy-one thousand square miles (nine thousand square miles added), on which the largest crop ever known has doubtless been raised, variously computed at the present time from 620,000,000 to 700,000,000 bushels. The area now under wheat is therefore less than four per cent of our arable land.
In order to develop our potential in wheat it will be best to limit our present consideration to three States only—namely, Minnesota, North and South Dakota—from which we derive the greater part of our spring wheat. The area of these three States is two hundred and thirty-two thousand square miles, disregarding fractions. The land which is deemed to be suitable for wheat growing is estimated by the officials from whom I have derived reports at one hundred and sixty thousand square miles. The crop of 1898 is computed at 190,000,000 bushels, a quantity sufficient to supply Great Britain with all that she needs in addition to her domestic production. It has been grown on an area of less than twenty thousand square miles, or upon one eighth part of the land of these three States only; the rest of the wheat land can be as surely and profitably devoted to the production of wheat as that part already under that crop. The fact may be recalled that the territory which now constitutes the two States of North and South Dakota began to be computed separately from other States only in 1880, when a little under 3,000,000 bushels were credited to that territory. The minimum product of these two States this year will be 100,000,000 bushels.
One of the authorities upon whom I rested for absolute information is Mr. L. G. Powers, chief of the Bureau of Labor of the State of Minnesota, in whose Annual Report for 1896 is the most exhaustive study of the grain production of the Mississippi Valley that has ever been made. I therefore do not hesitate to incorporate in this article his comments upon the proof sheets sent to him:
"The probable product of wheat in a State like Minnesota, at a fixed price, such as Mr. Atkinson mentions, can be estimated, even approximately, only by taking account of a number of such factors as the present actual and relative profit of the wheat farmer, and the probable changes that will be made in the next few years in the cost of cultivating wheat and of transporting it to London. A few of the leading well-known facts relating to these subjects may with profit be noted in this connection, and first a few words with reference to the profits of wheat raising in Minnesota.
"Whatever may be true of wheat raising in Europe, or in the Atlantic coast States of America, it can be positively asserted that the average profit of the Minnesota wheat grower has been steadily though irregularly increasing since the admission of this State to the Union in 1858. This is evidenced by the relative number and amount of farm-mortgage foreclosures in the State, as a whole, and in its several sections at the present time and in the past. Properly to use those foreclosures as a measure of the increasing prosperity of the Minnesota wheat farmer, two facts should be kept in mind. In 1880, and prior to that time, the industry of wheat growing was most fully developed in those counties which now constitute the First Congressional District. The farmers of those counties at that time depended for their income largely upon their wheat crops. Later they have adopted a highly diversified system of agriculture in which wheat is only an incidental cash crop. The exclusive cultivation of wheat now finds its seat in the counties composing the Seventh Congressional District. The lands of this district are situated about two hundred miles on an average farther from the markets of Europe than those of the First District. Notwithstanding this fact and all changes in the selling price of wheat, and all allied changes affecting the wheat industry of the State, the farm-mortgage foreclosures in the Seventh District in the five years ending with December, 1897, were relatively twenty per cent less than they were in the First District in the five years 1880 to 1884, and were forty per cent less than in the five years 1869 to 1873. To the extent represented by these figures has the average cultivation of wheat as an exclusive crop become more profitable in Minnesota than it was twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. A much greater increase of farm prosperity has taken place in those counties which have adopted a diversified system of agriculture, and made wheat an incidental cash crop.