The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-27

magnificent home demand has put the cereal on a commercial basis that insures against the possibility of its becoming fuel again except in the event of a seri- ous panic. The bulk of the crop at pres ent never leaves the counties in which 1t Is grown The producers prefer to con- vert it into meat, cheese, butter, milk or other products. While America has learned to assimflate her corn crop Eu- rope Is learning to grow corn in large quantities. Austria Hungary is now the second corn producing country in the world and her product is increasing every year, but the demand increases so much more rapidly than the production that the annual imports increase materially each year. Northern China Italy and parts of Africa are now using large quantities of corn for food. Our heaviest exports go to England. Holland, Germany and Den mark, and a part of the corn imported into these countries finds its way to the tables of the inhabitants.
 Corn grows from Siberia to the South Sea Islands, although the greatest pro- ducing section is the corn belt in the United States, the latitude of which is measured by the northern and southern boundaries of Illinois. Almost every civ- ilized country is now growing corn and the acreage is being expanded in most of them, burt the United States grows about 75 per cent of the worlds crop, and as it will be possible, in the opinion of experts to expand the American crop to 5,000 000,O GOO bushels on the present acreage by improved methods of agriculture. there is no danger that this country will lose her position as the great corn grower or cease to grow the proportion of the worlds crop that she now produces.
 Every state and territory in the union grows corn. The crop means millions cf profits annually to transportation com- panies. It has built thousands of miles of railroads in the great west, 1t bult Chicago and when the fire almost de- stroyed that city, corn rebuilded it. Aside from it's uses as food and for distiiing whisky corn is now the basis of a num- Der of important manufacturing indus tries. Not until recently was it discov- cred that the germ of the corn grain
 contained a valuable oil. Under nigh
 pressure this hitherto unconsdered part
 of the grain now yields a product that makes it more valuable in proportion to
 it's size than the rest of the grain. The oil is used for salad dressings and other
 purposes, and is frequently sold under another name. Cornstalk pith has been for some years manufactured into ce!u- lose. used between the inner and outer shells of battleships to prevent piercing by missiles. and to prevent leaks by swell ing when the water rushed into a hole
 made by a projectile. Many kinds of
 starch are made from corn, running from that which is served upon the table to that which is used in the laundry. These are only few of the important corn
 products. there being more than 100 all together.
 The modern farmer using the latest ma chinery, has reduced from four hours and thirty-four minutes to forty-one minutes the human labor required to produce bushel of corn. He knows to the fraction of cent the cost of production per bushel He loosens the ground with a
 gang blow, plants the grain by ma chinery. harvests it by machinery, shells it by steam, stores 1t in great elevators ships it by train to the lake ports and the sea, where 1t Is loaded upon steam-
 ships for export. It is a far cry from the methods of the Indian squaw who gouged hole in the ground with stick
 and dropped grain of corn into 1t, to the methods of the twentieth century farmer, but If Candolle Is right the world is debtor to some wandering prehistoric
 Indian for the preservation of the grain
 that is now one of the greatest factors in
 agriculture, and the first crop of the greatest agricultural country in money value.
 Tomorrow-Historic Churches in Amer lea.