+----------+----------+----------+--------------+------------+----------+ | Oats, | Wheat, | Hay, |Miscellaneous.| Maize, | Wheat | | 70,800 | 81,600 | 109,400 |Roots, cotton,|Indian corn,| for | |sq. miles.|sq. miles.|sq. miles.|tobacco, etc.,| 226,600 | export, | +----------| | |168,600 sq. m.| sq. miles. | 143,000 | | +----------+----------| Excessive. | |sq. miles.| | +--------------+------------+----------+ |Arable land unassigned 1,200,000 square miles.| |Deduct for cities, towns, parks, | | and reserves of all kinds 200,000 " " | | --------- | | Reserve for future use 1,000,000 " " | | | | Forest, mountain, arid, etc., not counted, about 1,000,000 square | | miles, not included in these lines or squares. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ No reduction on area cultivated on prospective improvement in the present methods of farming, although it may be assumed that the prospective increase of crop per acre will exert great influence. If the facts should be in 1930 consistent with Mr. Hyde's "speculation" it would therefore appear that our ability to meet the domestic demand of 1930 with proportionate export of cattle, provisions, and dairy products, and to set apart a little patch of land for the export of 1,226,000,000 bushels of wheat raised at the rate of only 13.4 bushels per acre from 143,000 square miles of land will be met by the cultivation of not exceeding 700,000 square miles out of 2,000,000 available. I should not venture to question the conclusions emanating from the Department of Agriculture, or the deductions of so eminent a scientist as Sir William Crookes, had I not taken the usual precaution of a business man in studying a business question. I went to the men who know the subject as well as the figures on which statistics are to be compiled. Being supplied by the Popular Science Monthly with one hundred proofs of the first nine and a half pages of the December article in which the terms of the problem are stated, I sent those proofs to the chiefs of the experiment stations and to the secretaries of agriculture in all the States from which any considerable product of wheat is now or may be hereafter derived; also to many makers of wheat harvesters; to the secretaries of Chambers of Commerce, and to several economic students in the wheat-growing States. This preliminary study was accompanied by the following circular of inquiry: BOSTON, MASS., _October 5, 1898_. _To the Chiefs of the Agricultural Experiment Stations and others in Authority_: