For a number of years, and until very recently, our wheat had made us commercially, in one sense at least, the superior of all the other nations of the world. The finer breadstuffs were not to be had in Europe except from American sources. Year by year the price of wheat increased until the American farmer became so enviable an individual that a great many merchants went out of business, bought farms, and attempted to compete with him. As is usually the case when any business is so flourishing that every one wishes to go into it, endeavors were being made by hundreds of sharp-eyed observers to see whether wheat might not be more profitably produced in other portions of the world, and the success which attended these observations has been anything but gratifying to the American farmer. Russia and Hungary are producing more wheat than ever before. Wheat is pouring into Europe from Asia, and even from Africa, and the American farmer now is not quite so sure as to what will be the result of a good crop of wheat--not sure whether it will yield a profit or fail to pay expenses. Even the reductions in freight rates, alike from the agricultural districts to the seashore and from America to Europe, do not compensate him for the great reduction in the price of what once he fondly believed was an enduring source of profit. The time when it was safe to put an entire farm into wheat has passed. Farmers are studying mixed crops now with all the intelligence that is in them, for a man’s first duty is to earn food for his family. Again, when it was discovered that, helped by some refrigerating process, we could send fresh meat to Europe, the whole country arose, cheered and patted itself upon the back. Now, surely the whole world would be at our feet, for were we not feeding Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans cheaper than any of their home producers could do it? Our self-satisfaction increased when it was discovered that live cattle also could be sent over to Europe in immense quantities and pay a handsome profit in spite of occasional losses due to storms and injudicious loading of the vessels which carried the animals. About this time ranches began to cover all ground in the far West that was fit at all for grazing, and the estates, nominally the property of those who managed them, came to be of baronial extent. But what America could do, Australia began to think she also could do, and even South Africa was not averse to experimenting in the same direction. We still send a great deal of meat to Europe, but ranch property is not as much in demand as once it was. There are ranches now to be had for the taking, but the takers are few.