Our Achievements and Prospects: Dakota and Africa
"Half of Minnesota's nearly 40,000,000 acres are still unfarmed. Of the two Dakotas, only 19,000,000 acres are occupied, with four times that extent still waiting the further advance of civilization. Not a tithe of the mineral wealth of the Mountain States has been developed. Alaska, reached by numerous steamship lines from Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland, with its boundless wealth of auriferous rivers and mountains, is an outpost of this Northwest belt. Large areas of fertile but arid land in Montana, Washington, and northwestern Dakota, now useful only as pastures for cattle and sheep, may easily be converted into fruitful fields by a scientific system of irrigation, for which nature affords abundant facilities in the mountain streams and in the artesian basins which underlie the Dakota plains."
Our exports of flour promise to exceed the exports of wheat.
The American farmer is cheered by the assurances of competent authorities that he has now a new money-making crop at hand if he cares to seize the opportunity. He is urged to cultivate sugar. As the subject is interesting from various points of view, we quote from a striking article in the Forum written by Secretary Wilson, of the Department of Agriculture.]
"The importance of this subject to the people of the United States may be seen from the fact that during the past five years the average amount paid out by them for imported sugar has been $101,575,293. The refined product from imported sugar during the year 1897 was 1,760,607 tons, while the production of sugar from all sources in the United States during 1897 amounted to 335,656 long tons, as follows: 41,347 tons from sugar-beets; 289,009 tons from ribbon cane; 5,000 tons from maple trees, and 300 tons from sorghum cane. Thus the total consumption in the United States for the year was 2,096,263 tons. .
"The farmers of our country produce from the soil grains, cotton, tobacco, vegetables, fruits, horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, various animal products, and the like; and if we can add to our farm systems any crop that yields an article of common use, is not exhaustive of plant-food, and whose by-product is valuable in making meat and dairy products, it will find favor with producers. There are very few crops or manufactures of them of which this can be said so emphatically as it can be said of sugar-beets. The grains are well-known soil-robbers. They carry from the soil nitrogen, potash, phosphoric acid, lime, magnesia, and the other elements of plant-food. Tobacco is peculiarly severe in this regard because none of its by-products are fit for animal food; and what is sold from the farm carries away so much mineral plant-food that most soils are soon exhausted if not replenished by commercial fertilizers, the purchase of which is out of the question in many parts of the United States. Meats take away comparatively little plant-food from the soil compared with their money value. The cotton-plant is not exhaustive if the stalks are plowed under and the seed is returned to the soil, either directly or through the instrumentality of domestic animals. The oil of the cotton-seed may be sold without taking any plant-food from the farm, as it comes from the atmosphere through the leaves of the plant. Butter is also harmless in this respect, and does not impoverish the land on which the cow grazes. Sugar is as harmless as oil and butter; it comes from the carbonic dioxide of the atmosphere. If the sugar-beet is hauled to the factory and the pulp taken back to the farm, no plant-food is lost to the soil."
As certain sugar-producing countries threaten a tariff war, the writer advocates a change of farm policy.
"Instead of sending our mill-feeds abroad in the shape of oil-cake, bran, cotton-seed meal, gluten meal, and similar by-products, we should ourselves convert them into live stock, meats, and other animal products, in which form they can be sold in foreign markets to greater advantage. When we make our own sugar and divide $100,000,000 among our farmers, laborers, and capitalists, we can afford to that extent to keep our raw materials at home."
The deeper meaning of the statistics of our recent exports is perceived when we ask where all these swelling totals of merchandise find their destination. The old-established markets are not consuming all the excess of our later annual output. We are finding new markets, and when we do not readily find them we are making them. Old countries are being explored, and tight markets opened up. The financiers of Europe have been eagerly seeking more profitable fields for the investment of capital than their own countries have afforded of late. The great colonies of England have employed much of this. Her efforts to establish new territory in Africa have the same end in view. Russia is pushing her powerful interests in almost every direction, quietly dominating where she does not openly annex. France and Germany are trying their hands at colonization, and so the game goes on, with greater or less success to the adventurers. The extent to which the leading countries of Europe have been absorbing territory in Africa and Asia is indicated by a recent report of the United States commercial agent at Weimar regarding the colonial possessions of European states. He shows that, outside the mother country, Great Britain holds 16,662,073 square miles of territory, with a population of 322,000,000; France, 2,505,000 miles, with a population of nearly 50,000,000; Germany, 1,615,577 miles, with a population of 7,450,000; Holland, 783,000 miles, with a population of 34,210,000; and Portugal, 809,914 miles, with a population of 10,215,000.