The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1921-05-20

thorities say, wheat was wild grass
and the theory has been advanced
that 1t Is descendant Of wild EN-
mer." traces of which are found even
today among the rocks, of upper Cali
lee, in the vicinity of Mount Hermon.
The large fine grains which now
60 to make up our daily bread are
the result Of ages of cultivation and
the experiments of innumerable Bur
banks, men who made it their work
to improve upon the work of Nature.
Enough of these grains were gathered
from the wheat fields of the United
States in 1920 to make something like
750,O00,0O0 bushels.
The average mind cannot conceive
of such an enormous quantity of grain
measured in this way. But an illus
tration may make it clearer. These
seven hundred million bushels would
fill enough freight cars to make one
continuous train from New York to
San Francisco and back again, with
few hundred miles left over.
The staff of Life.
Bread has rightly been called the
staff of life, the staff upon which
strong nations lean. And. whereas
we have cultivated the taste for some
foods now more or less in common
use, we did not have to learn to eat
wheat-it came as naturally as the
drinking Of water. Man seems to
have been born with liking for
bread, and to eat 1t once is to desire
1t ever afterward.
We have heard the title liking" ap-
piled to corn, but rightly it belongs
to wheat; for wheat contains all the
fifteen essential elements Of nutri-
ton and there is probably no one
other article Of food which win carry
q man so far or so well.
The people Of the United States are
naturally great wheat eaters. The
average per capita, after the grain
has been turned into flour, is five,
bushels a year. It was in this coun-
try that wheat-raising received its
mighty impetus through the invention
Of the reaper by Cyrus Mccormick.
It was the reaper that made great
wheat crops possible and cheap bread
certainty In the United States; and
II inevitably followed that we became
the greatest eaters Of wheat in the
world. All other nations followed
our methods of cultivation and har-
vesting, and they, too, came to depend
more upon wheat as food and to
raise more of 1t.
Every Day a Harvest.
A writer has truly said that the
sun never sets on the harvest fields Of
the world; in every month of the year
wheat is being harvested somewhere.
In January it Is in the Argentine and
New Zealand; in February and March
It is in East India. Upper Egypt, and
Chill. April finds the work going on
In Lower Egypt, Asia Minor, and Mex
leo. In May the harvesters are busy
in Algiers, Central Asia, China, Japan
and Texas.
June sees them at work in the fields
of Turkey, Spain. Southern France,
California. Tennessee, Virginia, Ken
lucky. Kansas. Utah and Missouri.
When July comes the harvest shifts
to Northern France, Roumania. Aus
tria- Hungary, Southern Russia, South
ern England, Germany, Switzerland,
and, in the United States, in Oregon,
Nebraska, Southern Minnesota, Wis
consin. Colorado. Washington, the
group of central states, New England
and Eastern Canada. August. per-
haps the quietest month of the year,
still finds plenty going on in Holland,
Belgium. Great Britain, Denmark, Po-
land, the Dakotas, and Western Can
ada. In September the scene shifts