Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1905-03-28
Corn Crop Worth $4,000, 900.
DISCOVERIES WHICH SHOW THAT THE
YIELD CAN BE DOUBLED.

If a gold field could be discovered
which in one year would turn out tel
times the value of all the gold and silve
now annually mined in the United State.
it would set our nation crazy and excit,
the world. Such gold field has beer
discovered, within the past four years
in the great corn belt of the United
States, says Frank G. Carpenter in thu
Boston Sunday Globe. Our corn croE
now amounts in round numbers to more
than Z, 1000, ,000, 900 bushels and is annual
ly worth in the neighborhood OF
81 600. 100000. All the gold and silver
mined in this country amounts to but
little more than 500, 900, 900, so that the
corn crop is worth 10 times as much.
Now, the discoveries of the last four
years have shown that this great crop
can be doubled, without adding one acre
to the land cultivated or one cent to the
cost of cultivation. This means in time
a possible cultivation increase of 81 ,000.-
600, 900 annually in our national wealth.
CORN Is KING.
These are big figures, but corn is
mighty. 1t is Uncle Sans biggest crop.
1t is the greatest crop of the world, and
we have the monopoly of it. How great
it is few people realize. The figures are
so vast ones mind cannot grasp them.
In 1902 we raised more than 2, 900, 900, 900
bushels of corn, and in 1908 the product
was more than 1900, 900, 900 bushels.
Let me put those figures into concrete
shape. Suppose all the corn raised last
year could be gathered into one pile and
loaded on twu-horse wagons. Let each
wagon, with its team and driver, take
up 80 feet of roadway and start the pro-
cession eastward, loading wagon after
wagon, as the corn crop moves on. Put
the noses of the horses at the tailbOards
of the wagons in front, and how far
away do you think the first wagon would
be when the last wagon was loaded?
Suppose them to start at the Mississippi
river, would il be down in Ohio? No, In
New York? No. Out in the Atlantic?
Over in Europe? Away of in Asia? In
the middle of the Pacific ocean? No.
1t would be thousands upon thousands
of miles further ON. 1t would reach not
once, but II times around the world, a
distance of more than 300, 900 miles.
One years corn crop at 40 bushels of
shelled corn to the wagon would make
IS continuous liues of wagon loads from
Boston To San Francisco.
If you could bridge the skies and start
it toward the moon it would make a
solid wagon train which would reach to
that dead planet and go on for 10000
miles beyond.
If you could load it on cars in 500
bushel lots at 40 feet to the car, includ-
ing platforms, and start them on a
double track the two first cars would have
gone from the Mississippi to New York,
across the Atlantic, across Europe and
almost across Asia before the last two
cars were loaded.
And this mighty crop can be doubled
as have said before, without adding
one cent to the cost of production or
one acre To the area now used. 1t not
only can be done, but is being one. The
discovery was made about four years
ago that the right kind of seed has
everything to do with the yield of the
corn crop, that there is fine blooded
corn as there is tine blooded stock, and
that corn can be bred up like high
strain of Jersey cattle or a pedigreed
trotter. Farm and Home.