populations. In 1878 the export of cereals alone reached $181,777,000. England alone imported 36 millions cwts. of wheat from America in 1879, and the yearly demand, as well as the yearly supply, seems more likely to increase than to diminish. The conditions of American agriculture are not only of vast interest to that country but also to the inhabitants of about six-tenths of the civilized world.

THE PROVISION TRADE.

WE have seen how great are the resources of the United States in providing cereals for the population at home, as well as for a large proportion of the European countries. Indian corn and wheat, however, are not the only food supplies for which America is famous; and if she may be called the granary of the world, she may with equal justice be looked upon as the larder of England, so enormous and rapidly increasing is the provision trade, with which she is able to meet the demands which Great Britain makes every year. The four great divisions of this trade are pork, flour, dairy produce, and canned foods. The number of live stock in the States in 1878 was as follows:

Of this vast number of animals, a good proport is annually exported (in 1878 to the amount $5,844,653, of which about 55 per cent. goes Great Britain and Ireland.) The magnitude of provision trade is seen principally in such articles bacon and ham, pork, beef, butter, cheese, lard a preserved meats. Whether the cattle are to co to England alive or dead, they are first of all rais in the stock-feeding regions and prairies extendi westward through Nebraska and Wyoming over t fertile Laramie Plains to the Rocky Mountains, a on for a thousand miles farther through Utah, Orego and Washington Territories, where is room for mo than five times the live stock now raised. These va American grazing grounds run from the Gulf Mexico for 1,500 miles or more, over the internationa boundary line into Canada. Texas rears 5 millio head of cattle; Colorado has 30 million acres adapte for growth of grain, cattle or sheep. Wyoming ha 55,000 square miles of grazing, and the same may b said of Montana. Over these wide areas herds o cattle roam, numbering from 1,000 to 50,000 head feeding ground being plentiful, and the only neces saries to be looked after being a good supply of water and some salt. From the pastures there is, during the summer and autumn, a constant stream of cattle to some of the depôts on the Union and Northern Pacific Railways, to be taken to Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, or the Atlantic ports, thence to be conveyed to London, to which place it is computed that the cost of carriage of a bullock from Colorado is from £10 to £12. Great numbers of cattle, however, go no

farther eastward than the Indian-corn regions of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri, where they are cheaply fattened for killing, some 2,000 carcases being forwarded every week to British markets. They are shipped at New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Philadelphia to London, Liverpool, or Glasgow, and brought over in fine condition in large refrigerating steamers, each of which carries from 800 to 3,000 quarters. Fresh American meat can thus be sold at British ports at about 6d., per lb. leaving a profit; but there is little chance of the British consumer getting it at anything like a reasonable price, as long as he is in the hands of the British butcher.

In this city alone

The greatest speciality, however, of the American provision trade is that of hog-packing, which is carried on to an enormous extent at Chicago, Cincinnati and a few smaller cities, the former being the head-quarters of the trade. The great hog-raising States are those which produce the most maize or Indian corn, and the bulk of the hog-packing is carried on in the winter, although of recent years there has been a summer business also at Chicago. the number of hogs killed and converted into pork in 1878 was 4,009,311. The operation of killing and packing is done with such celerity as to be almost magical, it being commonly stated that a hog enters at one end of the establishment and emerges in a few minutes packed in a barrel. One firm in Chicago packs during the year 140,000 tons of hogs, enough to afford 45 freight loads daily; and to accommodate the continual stream of animals which arrive in the city, stockyards have been constructed which cover

350 acres and will hold 118,000 at a time, upwards of 7 million hogs annually passing through them. The chief centres of the pork-packing trade are Chicago (Illinois), Cincinnati (Ohio), Kansas City, St. Joseph and Hannibal (Missouri).

The trade in canned provisions is also very large and rapidly increasing. Chicago is one of the leading places for making tinned beef, one firm putting up daily 40,000 to 50,000 cans, in tins made on the premises, holding 2lbs. to 28lbs. each. Three hundred beasts are killed and dressed in the day here, while the St. Louis Beef Canning Co. (Missouri) slaughter daily during the season 1,000 cattle. Others besides the Western States are gradually entering the tinned provision trade. On the Pacific side, the State of Oregon is largely embarking in it, and great quantities of tinned beef, mutton, and salmon from the Columbia River, are prepared at Portland, the capital, for exportation.

The Eastern States, and especially those of New England, carry on large industries in canning fish, oysters, vegetables and fruit, and we in England are indebted to America for many of these cheap and appetizing delicacies.

Cheese is another article of which the production and export are almost fabulous in extent, cheesemaking being carried on by the co-operative factory system, that is, the combination of a number of farmers to supply milk to a certain factory, each one sharing in the expense and the profits. In 1874 New York State had 1,139 of these cheese factories, at which 23,000 farmers delivered the daily milk of 308,352 cows; but at the present time it is estimated that

over 30,000 farms are laid under contribution for these supplies. At Little Falls (New York) more than 25,000,000 lbs. of cheese from the factories annually change hands, and still more at the town of Utica. In 1878 the American cheese exports amounted to 134,000,000 lbs.

In

Mention has been made in the preceding chapter of the grain that is grown in the different States. addition to the capital and industry involved in this, the milling or "flouring" interests are of immense importance. There is scarce a town of any size, especially if it possess water power, that does not contain, more or less, large flour or grist mills, while in some of the States the preparation of flour for export is on a huge scale. The State of Minnesota is one of the busiest in this direction, being almost entirely occupied with milling and timber cutting. There are in this State 405 flour mills, of which 105 are run by steam and the remainder by water power. When working at their full capacity, these mills, which are principally at Minneapolis and St. Paul's, will produce 111,167,550 barrels of flour, consuming in the process 55,837,500 bushels. In connection with the export of flour and grain, it should be mentioned that a vast industry is caused in the matter simply of loading and forwarding. Chicago is again the leader in this branch of business, and the warehouses for storing, and the elevators for loading and unloading, are on a gigantic scale.

Sugar is an article of considerable importance as an American staple, though its growth and manufacture is almost entirely limited to one State, that of Louisiana, which possesses, in the delta of the Missis