Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/797

Rh 1881 to 1885, inclusive, was 436,000,000 bushels; while for the ten years preceding—some of which supplied the heaviest demands for exportation ever experienced—the average was only 366,000,000 bushels. According to Mr. Neumann Spallart, a German statistician of repute, the production of cereals in Europe doubled from 1869 to 1879; and in the case of Russia, her exports of wheat increased from 36,565,000 bushels in 1880 to 67,717,000 in 1884. According to figures of the United States Bureau of Agriculture, the average production of wheat in Europe, for the five years from 1875 to 1881, inclusive, "increased some 50,000,000 bushels over the average of the ten years preceding, which included several seasons of unusually low yield in Western Europe." In 1862 the United States exported breadstuffs to the value of $24,000,000; in 1872 the corresponding value was $87,000,000; and in 1880, $288,000,000; and if since this latter year there has been a decline in the value of American cereal exports, it can not be attributed to any impairment of ability to produce and export, if sufficient inducements existed. Of the respective wheat-crops of the United States for the years 1884-'86, 30 per cent—in the form of wheat and flour—have been exported, the largest proportion ever recorded, except during the era of crop failures in Western Europe—i.e., 1878-1883. While, therefore, it is clear that the comparative product of the heretofore great wheat-producing countries has not diminished, recent experiences are also making it evident that the world is hereafter to derive important supplies of wheat from sources which a few years ago did not exist, or were regarded as of little importance. For example, British India, which in 1880 exported only 13,896,000 bushels, in 1885 exported 39,312,000 bushels, and whose increase of wheat exports appears to be coincident with the increase of the railway mileage of the country. During the same period Australia and New Zealand, where a rapid growth of population inevitably tends to divert agricultural industry from wool-producing to wheat-growing, increased their exports from 13,999,000 bushels in 1880 to 19,466,000 in 1885; and the Argentine Republic, from 5,772 bushels in 1881 to 3,986,000 in 1884. All the indications are, furthermore, that the increase of wheat supplies from new sources is likely to be continuous and of great magnitude: from India, whose internal and foreign commerce is yet only in its infancy, but is developing with extraordinary rapidity under the influence of railroad construction; from the great wheat region of Manitoba, to