Arizona republican., 1898-02-09
CORN AND ARIZONA.

There will be an interesting confer
 ence at Chicago on February 16 of
 various interests affected by the price i of corn. Five hundred invitations
 have been issued to farmers and ship
 pers in the corn belt, members of state
 agricultural boards, railway represen- tatives and manufacturers of corn pro- ducts. The object of the gather in g
 will be to devise means for the in
 creased use of corn abroad
 1 An organization will be formed and it is expected to make exhibits at Omaha this year and at Buffalo (the
 Pan-American exposition) in 1899. From these displays an exhibit for the Paris exposition will be selected. One of the first things the organiza- tion will request of congress will be to divert the appropriation now used for the purchase of seeds to the pur-
 pose of advertising the uses of corn.
 Secretary of Agriculture Wilson and a large number of others interested in practical and scientific agriculture are said to have endorsed the scheme.
 An effort to get the seed appropria- tion diverted for the purpose named.
 would probably be unsuccessful. The seed perquisite is one to which the av- craze congressman clings with re- markable tenacity. But the confer ence can doubtless devise methods to boom King Corn abroad on practical lines, and we should say that in the proposed exhibits in this country, fol- lowed by one at the Paris worlds fair,
 much could be accomplished in the di- rection desired. All that is needed for a wider use of corn in the world is to spread the knowledge of the utility of
 corn as fodder for beasts and as food for man. Practical object lessons
 must be put before the eyes of the world, and convincing demonstrations of the processes of cooking and pre- pairing the great American cereal.
 This convention will afford an .ex
 world that Arizona can produce corn which is unequaled in quality by any in the Union. This IS a fact that is scarcely known outside the territory and is not appreciated even here. Very little corn is produced west of the Rocky mountains owing to the high altitude and the shortness of the corn growing season. Southern Arizona possesses all the advantages of the "corn belt' as to soil, and excels that 1,x, for r,1i,, fo
 The insect pests which destroy the corn crop frequently in the region east of the continental divide are absolute ly unknown here. Crop failures by reason of drouth are impossible where irrigation is practiced. Another ad vantage over the corn belt is that of market. While the eastern corn pro- ducer is obliged to often sell below cost of production or else hold his crop for a year, Arizona corn would find The yield per acre here is most satis- factory and no crop has proven more profitable. If these facts were brought to the notice of the struggling farm CTS in the states of Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas who de- pend almost wholly on corn for sup port, and who are never certain of crop, Arizona would gain consid- erable addition to her population that would be of the most desirable class. If the immigration commissioners in the corn producing counties of the ter ritory could combine to send a repre- sentative to the convention or even a paper to be read before it, setting forth the agricultural advantages of Arizona, the benefits thus gained would be permanent and valuable.
 Here is also an opportunity for the Phoenix chamber of commerce to at tract much attention to Arizona at small expense. The question of a corn exhibit from Arizona should also ho tolyop m of onoo