days. In Africa it was an article of commerce in the days of Jacob, whose son Joseph may be said to have run the first and only successful “corner” in wheat. For many centuries Egypt was famous as a wheat raiser; it was a cargo of wheat from Alexandria which St Paul helped to jettison on one of his shipwrecks, as was also, in all probability, that of the “ship of Alexandria whose sign was Castor and Pollux,” named in the same narrative. General Gordon is quoted as having stated that the Sudan if properly settled would be capable of feeding the whole of Europe. Along the north coast of Africa are areas which, if properly irrigated, as was done in the days of Carthage, could produce enough wheat to feed half of the Caucasian race. For instance, the vilayet of Tripoli, with an area of 400,000 sq. m., or three times the extent of Great Britain and Ireland, according to the opinion of a British consul, could raise millions of acres of wheat. The cereal flourishes on all the high plateaus of South Africa, from Cape Town to the Zambezi. Land is being extensively put under wheat in the pampas of South America and in the prairies of Siberia.
In the raising of the standard of farming to an English level the volume of the world’s crop would be trebled, another fact which Sir William Crookes seems to have overlooked. The experiments of the late Sir J. B. Lawes in Hertfordshire have proved that the natural fruitfulness of the wheat plant can be increased threefold by the application of the proper fertilizer. The results of these experiments will be found in a compendium issued from the Rothamsted Agricultural Experimental Station.
It is by no means, however, the wheat which yields the greatest number of bushels per acre which is the most valuable from a miller’s standpoint, for the thinness of the bran and the fineness and strength of the flour are with him important considerations, too often overlooked by the farmer when buying his seed. Nevertheless it is the deficient quantity of the wheat raised in the British Islands, and not the quality of the grain, which has been the cause of so much anxiety to economists and statesmen.
Sir J. Caird, writing in the year 1880, expressed the opinion that arable land in Great Britain would always command a substantial rent of at least 30s. per acre. His figures were based on the assumption that wheat was imported duty free. He calculated that the cost of carriage from Freight rates. abroad of wheat, or the equivalent of the product of an acre of good wheat land in Great Britain, would not be less than 30s. per ton. But freights had come down by 1900 to half the rates predicated by Caird; indeed, during a portion of the interval they ruled very close to zero, as far as steamer freights from America were concerned. In 1900 an all-round freight rate for wheat might be taken at 15s. per ton (a ton representing approximately the produce of an acre of good wheat land in England), say from 10s. for Atlantic American and Russian, to 30s. for Pacific American and Australian; about midway between these two extremes we find Indian and Argentine, the greatest bulk coming at about the 15s. rate. Inferior land bearing less than 412 quarters per acre would not be protected to the same extent, and moreover, seeing that a portion of the British wheat crop has to stand a charge as heavy for land carriage across a county as that borne by foreign wheat across a continent or an ocean, the protection is not nearly so substantial as Caird would make out. The compilation showing the changes in the rates of charges for the railway and other transportation services issued by the Division of Statistics, Department of Agriculture, U.S.A. (Miscellaneous series, Bulletin No. 15, 1898), is a valuable reference book. From its pages are culled the following facts relating to the changes in the rates of freight up to the year 1897.[1] In Table 3 the average rates per ton per mile in cents are shown since 1846. For the Fitchburg Railroad the rate for that year was 4.523 cents per ton per mile, since when a great and almost continuous fall has been taking place, until in 1897, the latest year given, the rate had declined to .870 of a cent per ton per mile. The railway which shows the greatest fall is the Chesapeake & Ohio, for the charge has fallen from over 7 cents in 1862 and 1863 to .419 of a cent in 1897, whereas the Erie rates have fallen only from 1.948 in 1852 to .609 in 1897. Putting the rates of the twelve returning railways together, we find the average freight in the two years 1859–1860 was 3.006 cents per ton per mile, and that in 1896–1897 the average rate had fallen to .797 of a cent per ton per mile. This difference is very large compared with the smallness of the unit. Coming to the rates on grain, we find (in Table 23) a record for the forty years 1858–1897 of the charge on wheat from Chicago to New York, via all rail from 1858, and via lake and rail since 1868, the authority being the secretary of the Chicago Board of Trade. From 1858 to 1862 the rate varied between 42.37 and 34.80 cents per bushel for the whole trip of roundly 1000 m., the average rate in the quinquennium being 38.43. In the five years immediately prior to the time at which Sir J. Caird expressed the opinion that the cost of carriage from abroad would always protect the British grower, the average all-rail freight from Chicago to New York was 17.76 cents, while the summer rate (partly by water) was 13.17 cents. These rates in 1897, the last year shown on the table, had fallen to 12.50 and 7.42 respectively. The rates have been as follows in quinquennial periods, via all rail:—
Chicago to New York in Cents per Bushel.
| 1858– 1862. | 1863– 1867. | 1868– 1872. | 1873– 1877. | 1878– 1882. | 1883– 1887. | 1888– 1892. | 1893– 1897. |
| 38.43 | 31.42 | 27.91 | 21.29 | 16.77 | 14.67 | 14.52 | 12.88 |
Calculating roundly a cent as equal to a halfpenny, and eight bushels to the quarter, the above would appear in English currency as follows:—
Chicago to New York in Shillings and Pence per Quarter.
| 1858– 1862. | 1863– 1867. | 1868– 1872. | 1873– 1877. | 1878– 1882. | 1883– 1887. | 1888– 1892. | 1893– 1897. | ||||||||
| s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. |
| 12 | 8 | 10 | 6 | 9 | 3 | 7 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 1012 | 4 | 10 | 4 | 3 |
Another table (No. 38) shows the average rates from Chicago to New York by lakes, canal and river. These in their quinquennial periods are given for the season as follows:—
In Cents per Bushel of 60 ℔.
| 1857–1861. | 1876–1880. | 1893–1897. |
| 22.15 | 10.47 | 4.92 |
In Shillings and Pence per Quarter of 480 ℔.
| 1857–1861. | 1876–1880. | 1893–1897. | |||
| s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. |
| 7 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 7 |
In Shillings and Pence per Ton of 2240 ℔.
| 1857–1861. | 1876–1880. | 1893–1897. | |||
| s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. |
| 34 | 6 | 16 | 6 | 7 | 6 |
This latter mode is the cheapest by which grain can be carried to the eastern seaboard from the American prairies, and it can now be done at a cost of 7s. 6d. per ton. The ocean freight has to be added before the grain can be delivered free on the quay at Liverpool. A rate from New York to Liverpool of 212d. per bushel, or 7s. 10d. per ton, a low rate, reached in Dec. 1900, is yet sufficiently high, it is claimed, to leave a profit; indeed, there have frequently been times when the rate was as low as 1d. per bushel, or 3s. 1d. per ton; and in periods of great trade depression wheat is carried from New York to Liverpool as ballast, being paid for by the ship-owner. Another route worked more cheaply than formerly is that by river, from the centre of the winter wheat belt, say at St Louis, to New Orleans, and thence by steamer to Liverpool. The river rate has fallen below five
- ↑ Valuable information will also be found in Bulletin No. 38 (1905), “Crop Export Movement and Port Facilities on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts”; in Bulletin No. 49 (1907), “Cost of Hauling Crops from Farms to Shipping Points”; and in Bulletin No. 69 (1908), “European Grain Trade.”
