I
Went Down To The Granaries And Climbed Up Into The Elevators.
I
saw the wheat running in rivers from one vessel into another, and
from the railroad vans up into the huge bins on the top stores of
the warehouses - for these rivers of food run up hill as easily as
they do down.
I saw the corn measured by the forty-bushel measure
with as much ease as we measure an ounce of cheese and with greater
rapidity. I ascertained that the work went on, week day and
Sunday, day and night, incessantly - rivers of wheat and rivers of
maize ever running. I saw the men bathed in corn as they
distributed it in its flow. I saw bins by the score laden with
wheat, in each of which bins there was space for a comfortable
residence. I breathed the flour and drank the flour, and felt
myself to be enveloped in a world of breadstuff. And then I
believed, understood, and brought it home to myself as a fact that
here in the corn-lands of Michigan, and amid the bluffs of
Wisconsin, and on the high table plains of Minnesota, and the
prairies of Illinois had God prepared the food for the increasing
millions of the Eastern World, as also for the coming millions of
the Western.
I do not find many minds constituted like my own, and therefore I
venture to publish the above figures. I believe them to be true in
the main; and they will show, if credited, that the increase during
the last four years has gone on with more than fabulous rapidity.
For myself, I own that those figures would have done nothing unless
I had visited the spot myself.
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