The Railway Library, 1909: A Collection of Noteworthy Chapters, Addresses, and Papers Relating to Railways, Mostly Published During the Year
History
The Railway Library, 1909: A Collection of Noteworthy Chapters, Addresses, and Papers Relating to Railways, Mostly Published During the Year
Railroads -- United States -- Periodicals
"Within a comparatively short time, I will say that within six years,
I will go on record, you won't send many cargoes of wheat from Tacoma
by sea, simply because the United States wants every bushel that will
be raised within the United States to feed her own people, and will
pay you more money for it. If they didn't pay you more money for it,
it would go to the foreigner, but our own people will pay more money
for it and take it somewhere and grind it into flour. If you look for
greater avenues or greater economy in transportation, but it will
cease to go out as wheat. I will give you an illustration and you can
draw your own conclusions as well as I can: In 1882 the United Slates
raised 504,000,000 bushels of wheat and we had 52,000,000 people and
we exported somewhere between 175,000,000 and 200,000,000 bushels.
Twenty-five years later, in 1907, we raised 634,000,000 bushels. We
increased in that twenty-five years a little less than 25 per cent.
in our wheat yield, or 130,000,000 bushels.
"Our population increased 64 per cent., and converging lines meet
somewhere. Now, if we had 90,000,000 of people--and we have between
88,000,000 and 90,000,000 this year--and use six and a half bushels
per capita, it would take 585,000,000 bushels for bread and seed.
Professor Rogers, of the Minnesota Agricultural College, puts our
consumption for bread and seed for the last few years at a trifle
over or a trifle under seven bushels. I think he uses ten years for
his average, and I use twenty-five to get an average of about six
bushels and forty pounds, and I call it six and one-half bushels.
"On last year's crop, with 634,000,000, we have had about 59,000,000
bushels to sell and we sold about 80,000,000. What is the result?
After the 15th of January wheat was higher in Minneapolis than it was
in Chicago, even up to the first of August, and part of the time it
was higher than it was in New York, because they wanted it to make a
loaf of bread to feed our people at home.
"We have not the great margin that we used to have. The seed on last
year's crop went down to 59,000,000 bushels and, if my figures are
equal to Professor Rogers'--and he is a professor of agriculture
in the Agricultural College and maybe he has more time to look
these questions up more carefully--but with his figures we hadn't a
bushel to sell. Suppose we had 60,000,000 bushels to sell, and we
are increasing in population at the rate of 2,000,000 per year, our
natural figure is between 1,300,000 and 1,400,000, and allow 700,000
for immigration, not eleven, twelve, thirteen or fourteen as we have
been having, but say seven and by 1950 you will have in the United
States, it figures out to be accurate, 208,000,000, but suppose we
have 200,000,000, it might come by 1945, or 1947, or it might be in
1955, but about that time we will have 200,000,000 people, and if
they use six and a half bushels per capita for bread and seed, it
would take 1,300,000,000 bushels to feed them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account