. The story of a grain of wheat. at peopledby a civilized and cultivated nation—the develop-ment of a great republic, upon which older nationsrely in a large and increasing measure for theirsupply of bread. King Cotton and King Cornhave been extolled in song and story, but theglomes of good King Wheat, far surpassing thoseof his fellow monarchs, have not as yet been thetheme of the song-maker. Perhaps his subjectshave been too busy extending his domains toproperly exalt his greatness and beneficence. The United States now occupies the stage ofthe worlds theatre as the greatest wheat-produc-ing
. The story of a grain of wheat. at peopledby a civilized and cultivated nation—the develop-ment of a great republic, upon which older nationsrely in a large and increasing measure for theirsupply of bread. King Cotton and King Cornhave been extolled in song and story, but theglomes of good King Wheat, far surpassing thoseof his fellow monarchs, have not as yet been thetheme of the song-maker. Perhaps his subjectshave been too busy extending his domains toproperly exalt his greatness and beneficence. The United States now occupies the stage ofthe worlds theatre as the greatest wheat-produc-ing country on the face of the earth, and if wemay judge by the average yield per acre, which isfar less than that of many other and older coun-tries, it is capable of producing, if the need exists,very much larger crops than even those of itsrecord-breaking year, which was 1901, when itraised 721 million bushels. This need, in orderto stimulate Americans to even greater results,must express itself in the form usually best appre-. 86 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT ciated by them—the almighty dollar. In otherwords, if a continued shortage in the worldswheat supply should occur, it would, of course,lead to a material advance in price. This pre-mium would bring out the best America could doin the way of a crop of wheat, and no one canaccurately estimate what that would be. Theeffect of higher prices on wheat production is theunknown factor which throws the wheat-famineprophets out of their reckoning and brings theirpessimistic forecasts to nothing. According to the very exhaustive and perfect-ly logical reasoning of many of these gentlemen,the consumption of wheat should have caught upwith the supply in the United States some yearsago. The statistics they presented certainlyproved their case, and their deductions were en-tirely reasonable and quite convincing. Figuresought not to lie, but nevertheless they very oftendo, and are caught at it. Nearly fifty years ago aworthy gentlema
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