United States was treated with general indifference and neglect down to the year 1872. In that year Congress, recognizing the need of detailed information bearing on the internal trade of the country which had already assumed vast proportions, passed an act providing for the appointment of a Select Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard "to investigate and report on the subject of transportation between the interior and the seaboard". This Committee known as the Windom Committee, in its two volume report published in 1874, made the following pertinent observation:

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of our governmental policy touching the vast internal trade of the nation, is the apparent indifference and neglect with which it has been treated. While detailed information has been obtained by the Government, under customs and revenue laws, in relation to commerce with foreign countries, no means have been provided for collecting accurate statistics concerning the vastly more important interests of internal commerce. No officer of the Government has ever been charged with the duty of collecting information on this subject, and the legislator who desires to inform himself concerning the nature, extent, value, or necessities of our immense internal trade, or of its relations to foreign commerce, must patiently grope his way through the statistics furnished by boards of trade, chambers of commerce, and transportation companies. Even the census reports which purport to contain an inventory of the property and business pursuits of the people, and which in some matters descend to the minutest details, are silent with regard to the billions of dollars represented by railways and other instruments of internal transportation, and to the much greater values of commodities annually moved by them.2

The reasons for the failure of the Federal Government to provide for the collection of information on the internal trade of the United States prior to this time are contained

2 Report of the Select Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (Washington, 1874), Vol. I, p. 8.

in the following statement by Joseph Nimmo, Chief of the Division of Internal Commerce, in the first annual report for 1876:

At the time of the formation of the Federal Government the term commerce was generally understood to comprehend trade carried on by means of sailing-vessels employed in our coastwise trade and in our trade with foreign nations. The commercial interests of the country were at that time almost exclusively maritime, and our foreign commerce, on account of issues growing out of the war of Independence and of the war of 1812, attracted public attention much more than did the then comparatively small internal com

merce.

The omission to collect information in regard to internal commerce is also attributable to the fact that it has never been a source of national revenue, whereas the Government has largely drawn its means of support from duties laid upon imports from foreign countries.3

Nimmo stated further that "during the first century of its existence our internal commerce has assumed proportions vastly greater than those of our foreign commerce." He presented estimates showing that "the value of our internal commerce on railroads is about sixteen times the value of our foreign commerce", adding that the data on internal commerce related "only to railroads"; and that "if it were possible to ascertain the value of the commerce between the different sections of the country on the ocean and Gulf and on the lakes, rivers, and other avenues of transportation, we should probably find that the total value of our internal commerce is at least twenty-five times greater than the value of our foreign commerce." If tonnage rather than value be considered, Nimmo thought it probable "that the tonnage transported on the various avenues of internal commerce is more than one hundred

3 Annual Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States (Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department), 1876, pp. 8, 9.

times greater than the tonnage composing our foreign commerce."'

THE MOVEMENT OF FLOUR AND GRAIN FROM THE PRIMARY MARKETS OF THE MIDDLE WEST TO THE ATLANTIC

AND GULF SEABOARDS

The movement of grain and animal products from the Middle West to the Atlantic and Gulf seaboards has always constituted the major and controlling interest in our internal trade. Of these two classes of food, grain commands primary consideration. A study of the production and distribution of grain shows that while the volume of corn production has always exceeded that of wheat amounting as a matter of fact to more than all the other cereals (wheat, oats, barley, rye, and buckwheat) combined - as an article of commerce wheat has been of greater importance than corn. The reasons for this are: first, that wheat is the most important breadstuff, constituting the first article of necessity in the food consumption of the United States, England, and France, a very decided prejudice having always existed in these countries against the use of corn as a breadstuff; and, second, that wheat is especially well adapted to the requirements of commerce, possessing relatively less bulk and higher value and being less susceptible to injury in transportation than corn. Wheat has therefore occupied the leading place in the internal and export grain trade of the United States. Corn, lacking the commercial advantages of wheat, has been better adapted to the local markets for feeding purposes. It has therefore been raised primarily as an animal food reaching the ultimate consumer largely in the form of beef, pork, dairy, and poultry products. Even so, however, corn has constituted an important article of commerce, second only to wheat among the

4 Annual Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States (Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department), 1876, p. 9.

cereals. Thus while primary emphasis must be given to wheat in any study of the grain trade of the United States, considerable attention should also be accorded to corn. Oats rank third in importance; while barley comes next. Rye and buckwheat occupy positions of comparatively minor significance in the grain trade, buckwheat not being listed at all in the commercial reports of this period.

The region of surplus production, as already shown, was the North Central division, the proportionate share of grain contributed by this division amounting in 1859 to 46.7 per cent of the entire product of the nation which in 1889 was increased to 71.4 per cent of the whole product; while the per capita production of this division was practically doubled, being increased from 62.4 bushels in 1859 to 117.8 bushels in 1889.5 Production ran far ahead of the rapid increase in population, thus giving rise to an annual product far in excess of local needs, for which there existed a growing demand in the East, the South, and the countries of western Europe.

The predominant position which the North Central division had thus achieved as the great surplus cereal producing region upon which the older sections of the country had become dependent, is shown by a statistical review of the production and distribution of grain for the year 1872. In that year the total volume of cereal production in the United States was estimated at 1,656,198,000 bushels. Of this amount the ten North Central States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, and Nebraska (the other two States of this division known as Dakota Territory until 1889 being omitted) produced 1,028,987,000 bushels, consisting of 156,228,00 bushels of wheat, 693,625,000 bushels of corn, 163,479,000 bushels of

Schmidt's The Internal Grain Trade of the United States, 1860-1890, in THE IOWA JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND POLITICS, Vol. XIX, p. 242.

oats, 10,092,000 bushels of barley, and 5,563,000 bushels of rye. Wheat, as already noted, was the most important, commercially, of all the cereals. According to the estimates of the United States Department of Agriculture, the consumption of wheat in these States amounted to five bushels per capita, which for a population estimated at 13,000,000 amounted to 65,000,000 bushels. The quantity of wheat used for seed was estimated at one and one-half bushels per acre, which for 13,811,008 acres under cultivation required 20,716,512 bushels. The estimated needs of this division, both for consumption and for seed, therefore amounted to 85,716,512 bushels which, subtracted from the total amount produced, left a surplus of 70,511,488 bushels available for shipment to the distant markets. Of this surplus the commercial reports show that 55,248,046 bushels were shipped east to the Atlantic seaboard States; 11,281,328 bushels were shipped south to the Gulf States; and 7,566,639 bushels were shipped north through Canada. The whole shipment amounted to 74,096,013 bushels which was destined for consumption in the Atlantic and Gulf States and the countries of western Europe. It will be noted that the estimated • Report of the Select Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (Washington, 1874), Vol. I, p. 12.

"The requirement of wheat per capita is not the same in all sections. In the South there is a large proportion of corn used, by whites as well as negroes. There are localities in the cotton States where half the average rate of consumption of wheat for the whole country is not sustained. In Maryland and Virginia the proportion used is much larger than in Alabama or Mississippi. Taking the twelve States from Maryland to Texas together, while some use less than four bushels and others nearly five, four bushels may be deemed a full average. For Tennessee and Kentucky a barrel of flour per capita, or 42 bushels, is assumed; and for the east, where little corn is used, and for the west, where wheat is so abundant and cheap, 5 bushels per head.”— Annual Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States (Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department), 1879, Appendix, p. 177.

8 Report of the Select Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (Washington, 1874), Vol. I, p. 12.

"The portion of the country requiring a part of this surplus comprises New