Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/798

778 open which the Canadian Pacific railroad was mainly constructed; from Algeria and Northern Africa, which, once the granaries of the Roman world, are now, for the first time for centuries, contributing something to the world's surplus of cereals; and from the South American states of the Argentine Republic and Chili, where extraordinary railroad construction is rapidly drawing an extraordinary European immigration to the finest of wheat-lands, which so recently as 1880 were practically inaccessible. Great, also, as is the present wheat product of the United States, Mr. Atkinson has shown that all the land at present in actual use in that whole country for growing maize or Indian corn, wheat, hay, oats, and cotton is only 272,000 square miles, out of 1,500,000 miles of arable land embraced in its present national domain; and, also, that the present entire wheat-crop of the United States could be grown on wheat-land of the best quality selected from that part of the area of the State of Texas by which that single State exceeds the present area of the German Empire.

In short, it would seem as if the world in general, for the first time in its history, had now good and sufficient reasons for feeling free from all apprehensions of a scarcity or dearness of bread. But while this is certainly a matter for congratulation, are there not, on the other hand, reasons for apprehension of serious disturbances to the material interests of that large part of the world's population engaged in agriculture, from the continued abundant production and decline in the price of their products?

The effect of the extensive fall in prices of agricultural products during the last decade has, as already pointed out, been most disastrous to the agricultural interests and population of Europe. It has reduced farming in England and Germany to the lowest stage of vitality, and has had less but similar effects in France, Italy, and Belgium. It has almost bankrupted the sugar-producing interests in the West Indies and the Dutch East Indies, and threatens the continuance of productive industries, and even of civilization, in these countries. In 1880, 44