The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-01-21
WHEAT AS A CIVILIZER.

An army, said famous captain, is like
a serpent: it travels on its belly. So
with the grand march of the race: true
advance is made in proportion to the
quantity of first-class food which can be
obtained by all classes. The chemists
and anatomists have brought the philos-
ophy of nutrition to a positive science.
We know that food is the best which re-
enfOrces the wasting blood with the
greatest promptness and certainty. We
know that of the cereals wheat
is king, because it has the great
est power of any single grain of
supporting vigorous and earnest life. a
hundred English wheat-eaters govern as
many thousands of the rice-consuming
swarms of Lower Asia. The Indian,
eating maize and wild meat, gives way
to the European living OH stall meat and
wheat-bread. In our late war the re-
gions that raise least wheat yielded first
to the pressure; while the States which
raise most wheat made the most stub
born resistance, and their soldiers were
more hardy, resolute and irrepressible.
In all countries where civilization is adj
vancing there is steady increase in the
number of those who eat wheaton
bread, and in the quantity which is con-
sumed by each person.
In England and Wales the amount
eaten by each person, on an average, is
q bushels, in Scotland, AZ bushels, in
Ireland, 80. These proportions accu-
rately represent the value and power of
these countries in civilization. The de-
mand for wheat bread is constantly and
everywhere on the increase, and so is
the demand for the most concentrated
and nutritious meats. English statisti-
clans some time ago noticed the steady
~. h H. 49,,
and that it outruns the growth of pop
ulation. Their dry columns, compiled
from death rates and census tables prove
some very cheerful and significant facts
that the number of those who eat
from wheaton loaf twice day and
have meat once a day, is regularly in
creasing; that in the same proportion
the average duration of human life in
creases, and the refinement, the courage,
and enterprise of communities is en-
HANGED. Such is now the demand for
wheat in Great Britain that although the
pick of her acres is always given to this
kingly cereal, and her average is TWEEN
ty-eight bushels to the acre, she cannot
begin to raise bread for her population,
but calls on the rest of the world, and
mainly on America, for fifty or sixty
million bushels annually. Facts like
these may with propriety cheer the
American grain farmer and give him
heart, when he hears that winter is set
ting in with the bulk of the wheat crop
unmoved and the price not encouraging.
For years he has received price which
has made the five-cent loaf of the poor
man in cities a sorry bite. Now its size
can be enlarged-doubled nearly. The
great nations of Europe can have more
and more of the best food, the nutri-
ment most exactly fitted to develop the
muscles, reinforce the blood, and feed
the brain. Tiny creatures, working by
myriads in tropic seas build up by hair
breadths of daily growth those vast
scaffolds of coral to which islands are
anchored, by which the continents are
propped. So ten thousand lonely plow-
men and sewers of the seed in wide
prairies, or by far rivers of the West,
are each adding, pound by pound and
tun by tun, to the vast aggregate of re-
sources by which the energy, the daring,
and the toll of modern progress are
made possible. The supply train is just
as indispensable in a campaign as the
parks of artillery. So in society the
wheat-grower advances society as truly,
though not as cOnspicuously. as he who
builds the long railroad, utters the ring
ing speech, or achieves the brilliant lit
erary success.-N. Y. Tribune.