Arizona republican., 1898-02-21

It WOulQ QrODdDly U6 DoIC0r to cut LQe
 train up into lots of twenty-five cars
 each, and run them in sections. That would make $40 trains. Running ten
 minutes apart, it would require more 1 than four whole days and nights for
 the grain laden cavalcade of MT. Lei ter to pass given point. If the tar
 get man sat up in the tower to make
 everything right for this procession
 he would see from Monday morning
 at o'clock till Friday morning at 5
 go trundling by. And then the tar
 get man would have a right to go ta | breakfast.
 l But suppose now that he has these 1 S,000,000 bushels of wheat in Chicago he should conclude to get playful with ! it. He doesn't want the bears to think he is sorry he bought it anyway Sup l pose he should conclude to put it up in glass column, the diameter of the brlm of champagne glass. His wheat filled column would be considerably higher than Chimberazo piled on Ev- ertt and that on Mount Elias and that on Mount Rainer and all of them on Pike's Peak. Indeed, the cloud-pierc- ing, star-disturbing line of Letter wheat would reach an altitude of l. 66O,O00 feet-rather more than twenty four times as far as our atmosphere extends, and 'tthe winds that blow be- tween the worlds" together with the saving quality of air, might be bad for any of the wheat which MT. Letter might want to use for feed.
 So he might conclude to cut up the long glass tube into many shorter ones and stand them fifty feet high. In that case they would each stand about as high as the roof of the elevated trains on the loop, and there would be 3O,OOO of them. Using them for mile posts, they would reach around the world and from here to Omaha be- sides If Mr. Letter should conclude to put all the 15,000,000 bushels of wheat he owns into the same shape the fifty-foot columns would reach twice around the earth at the equator
 One bushel of wheat made into bread will keep man alive and able to walk for sixty days. It may be news to you, but there are great many honest men working day after day in Chicago at the hardest kind of labor, supporting families, who do not have more than that amount Of food. And yet the streets we ride upon are paved by them, the railroads that take us home in the evening were built and are kept in repair by them. They shovel the snow and they sweep the streets at night. Soldiers have march ed thirty-one miles day and fought at battle at the end of it on that amount of food. Napoleon's army came back from Moscow to France on considerably less.
 Well, these eight million bushels of wheat would feed an army of 10000 men, which is the size of McClellan's magnificent army of the Potomac at it's best. a matter of eleven years. It would feed the entire military force of Russia, placed on war footing, and approximating 100000 soldiers, more than a year. It would make bread enough to keep the whole population of Chicago alive from now till the Fourth of July Of course we would need a little water and a little salt with it. and we might even hunger a trifie for pie-at least for meat pie. Also, we might need some vegetables to keep off scurvy and all that sort of thing. But if a hostile army should camp on the Belt Line railway this afternoon and refuse to let any food
  confiscate MT. Letters 5000 000 bush els of wheat and live till Independence day. After which most glorious event we should probably be still strong enough to go cut to the Belt Line and open that thoroughfare to the ordi- nary business of the year.
 The wheat from these Chicago ele- vators-the Letter wheat alone, mind you-would, if spread out on the ground to the width of a foot, make well grained pathway from here to the farthest point in Terre del Fuego. On that path we could go down the Mis- sissippi valley, across the Rio Grande, from the north to the south of MT. Bryans Mexico, through the hot head ed and contentious nations of Central America and across the lands which Simon Bolivar dedicated to freedom, and then on through the wilds of Pata- gonia and up to the very surf which beat one time about the keel of Ma gellan's Venturesome vessels. And our good Chicago feet would tread on nothing from start to finish but the Chicago wheat now in Chicago.
 If Joseph of old had had this much wheat in Egypt at the time Jacob sent down there from Canaan for food he could have given every workingman in Egypt and every pack animal in the land of Pharaoh all the wheat lh could carry; he could have sent them under escort of the Canaauitish stran- gers out through the Isthmus of Suez and up to the land of promise and still have had wheat enough for the whole Egyptian nation. They called it corn then, but it was really the identical grain now in the Letter elevator. May be it would not grade as ''No. 2 red l winter" but there would be a life-sus- taining strength to it quite equal to that owned by the Chicago merchant. Eight million bushels is a whole lot