CHAPTER XXXIII.

STATISTICS OF THE AGRICULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES.

By J. R. DODGE.

For the information of visitors to the Exposition Universelle of 1889, a statistical and cartographical exhibit of the resources of the United States, the production and distribution illustrating its agriculture was deemed appropriate and useful, was duly made, and will be briefly described in this report.

A series of four large maps of the United States is presented, illustrating the progress of twenty-eight years in the growing of cereals, cotton, and tobacco, and showing the distribution of each product, by States, at three different dates.

The diagrams, sixteen in number, show the local variation in rate of production of some of the principal crops, and the annual variation of the aggregate product; the relation of price to production, and the proportion of products exported. It also shows the distribution and increase of farm animals, the annual exportation of beef products, and the aggregate values by decades of all exports of beef and beeves, and the course of exportation of swine products. Among other points of illustration are the rates of wages of farm labor, by groups of States, the values at different dates of principal products, and a classification of agricultural and nonagricultural products in the foreign trade of the country, including both exports and imports. The progress of railroad building is also shown, from 1850 to the present time.

In prefacing the statements of statistical data upon which this graphic illustraion is based, it may be desirable to outline the physical resources of the country, and present a few salient points in its agricultural development and present status. The total land surface of the United States is about 3,600,000 square miles. Excluive of the unorganized Territory of Alaska, the official record is 1,856,108,800 acres, r 2,900,170 square miles. At least one-third of this area is divided into farms. n 1880 the proportion was 289 in every 1,000 acres; the number, 4,008,907, of the verage size of 134 acres. In 1870 the average size was 153 acres; in 1860, 199 cres. The tendency is toward smaller farms. A larger part of the existing farm rea is more productive than formerly; that which is known as "improved land” rable or in grass, constituted 40.1 per cent in 1860, 46.3 in 1870, and 53.1 in 1880. The production necessary for the 'subsistence of 63,000,000 people, with some irplus annually for foreign consumption, is obtained by a partial use of a third of le territory. The methods in use in large areas of the national domain are primive, employing a minimum of labor and a maximum of implements and machinery. s the public lands are virtually given away, any head of a family being able to ›tain a homestead of 160 acres at no expense beyond the land-office fees, the acuisition of land which rapidly acquires value with the settlement of its vicinage of more importance than good farming, of more immediate importance than proessive agriculture. Production is therefore small compared with its possibilis under conditions of progress inevitable in the future. In the older sections of e country scientific agriculture is more general, and the rate of yield increasing.

A tract of about 700,000,000 acres, included in what is designated the arid region, is extremely fertile, with insufficient rainfall for general agriculture. Irrigation, either actual at present or certain in the future, is all that is needed to insure large crops. It is probable that there will be a large increase of available water supply by the construction of a system of reservoirs, in the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains, for the retention of waters now wasted by spring flood, which will further help to make this part of the country a reliable and abundant resource for the food supply of a dense population.

The distribution of the population shows about 44 per cent employed in agricul ture. At the present time there are nearly 9,000,000 of farmers and farm laborers. The proportion is gradually decreasing, as manufacturing and mining ind tries are developed and extended. The fertility of the soil, improvement in rural methods, and wonderful advance of invention in increasing the productive power of labor by the use of labor-saving implements, insure an increasing measure of production for each producer employed and a release of rural labor for emp ment in other industries.

The first numbers of the graphic series are maps of the United States which sh by States, the quantity of wheat, corn, oats, cotton, and tobacco grown at the different dates mentioned.

No. 1.-Wheat distribution in the United States, crops of 1859, 1879, and 1887.

Between 1859 and 1879 wheat growing received a marvelous impetus from a combination of powerful causes-an increase of 60 per cent of population, the wastes of a civil war in which millions of armed men were engaged in the early years of this period, and on the rising of an extraordinary foreign demand in later years. That demand declining somewhat, the production of the last decade has remained without material change. While wheat is grown in nearly all the States, its distribution, as shown in the map, is very unequal. Six-tenths of the crop is produced in twelve of the forty-seven civil divisions. From three-fourths of them no wheat of any importance enters the avenues of commerce, while most of them find it necessary to supply deficiencies from the principal wheat-growing States.

No. 2.-Corn distribution in the United States, crops of 1859, 1879, and 1887.

In twenty years the production of maize was doubled. The apparent decline in 1887 was due to an unfavorable season. The crop of 1888 was estimated at 1,987,790,000 bushels grown on 75,672,763 acres. The distribution is now more general than that of wheat; it is a crop grown in every State and Territory, though not equally distributed, the higher elevations and poorer soils having a thin distribution. The great corn belt of the country is traversed by the Ohio and Missouri rivers and their tributaries where alluvial soils abound, between five hundred and nine hundred feet of elevation. Here are seven States, from Ohio to Nebraska, which produce

from six-tenths to two-thirds of each annual crop of the United States; and from this region is shipped all the corn that enters the general commerce of the country.

No. 3.-Oats distribution in the United States. Crops of 1859, 1879 and 1887.

The increase in the area and product of oats has been quite constant. It is not exported, except in very small quantity in the form of oatmeal. The increase in volume, from 1859 to 1887, amounts to 282 per cent. It is a crop used, as is maize, mainly for feeding farm animals, though the use of oatmeal as food has become very general. Like corn, it is mainly consumed in the United States, and depends upon home demand for its current price, which rises or falls in sympathy with the price of maize. It produces best in the higher latitudes. In the South it is liable to blight, and deteriorates from year to year in weight. None of the cereals require so frequent change of seed, as the climate of a large portion of the territory is very trying to this grain. The official distribution of seed of heavy weight and strong vitality has greatly improved and enlarged production.

801

No. 4.-Cotton and tobacco distribution in the United States. Crops of 1859, 1879,

and 1886.

Total....

5,387, 52

5,755, 359

6,445,864 434, 209, 461

472, 661, 157 532,537,000

Cotton and tobacco are industrial crops suited only to certain soils and climates. The former is a prominent product in only nine States. A very insignificant portion of the crop is of the sea-island variety, grown upon the shores of the Atlantic or The green-seed or upland cotton Gulf of Mexico, or on the islands near the coast.

is grown mainly in the tier of States bordering on these waters. In western Tennessee and the lower altitudes of Arkansas, on the alluvium of the Mississippi or in the valleys of rivers flowing into it from the west, are conditions favoring the extension of cotton-growing northward, thus extending its line of northern limitation at that point.

The consumption of the world, rather than that of this country, rules the extension of the cotton area of the United States. The product, therefore, does not increase The crop of 1859 was abnormally at the same ratio as an advance in population. large. It was much larger than that of previous years. The advance can be better understood by comparing the crops of twenty years prior to 1861 with those of twenty-four years since 1865, when planting was resumed after the civil war. tons the average would be 1,335 for the earlier period, and 2,256 for the later, or an increase of nearly 70 per cent.

In

H. Ex. 410-VOL V-51