228. Cotton Fields and Cotton Factories. Since the days of Eli Whitney cotton has been grown in all the southern states from Virginia westward to Texas, and from the Gulf of Mexico north to Missouri. More than one half of all the cotton in the world is grown in southern United States. High-grade cotton is also grown in California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and California is now one of our leading cotton-producing states.

A field of growing cotton is very picturesque. Its culture employs many laborers. The number of laborers needed, however, is not the same throughout the year. In the fall, when the bolls ripen, all hands, large and small, pick cotton. This work takes several months. Then the picked cotton is put through a gin which is still built along the lines of Whitney's invention. The cleaned cotton is pressed into large bales and is then ready for market.

The cotton seed goes to one mill, the cotton to another. For many years the seed was wasted. Farmers burned it or threw it away. But now in all parts of the South great mills crush the seed and make from it a valuable oil. What is left is cotton-seed cake, and is bought eagerly by cattle growers everywhere.

Only a few years ago almost all the cotton grown in the South was shipped away, either to Europe or to New England. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island cotton mills employ more people than any other industry, and great cities are supported almost entirely by manufacturing cotton goods. Now the South has also discovered that it can spin and weave its cotton at home. About many of its waterfalls is heard the hum of busy cotton mills. New cities are growing up, and prosperity has returned to the South.

229. The Grain that Feeds the Nation. From the days of the early colonists, wheat has been one of the most valuable crops produced in this country. In the states east of the Mississippi River the farmers have long raised it in connection with a variety of other crops. But as the newer lands west of this river were taken up, the settlers discovered that in that region wheat yielded more abundantly than any other crop.

From Kansas northward to Minnesota and western Canada lies a broad stretch of land which has cool spring weather and a light rainfall. This is the climate best suited to wheat, and here has developed the great wheat belt of America.

In this region there are vast wheat fields almost everywhere, stretching farther than the eye can see over the level surface. Most of the farms are very large, some of them including many thousands of acres. The work on these places is done with the most modern machines. Traction engines are used to pull the great plows, the largest of which turn fifty furrows at a time. In harvest time an army of reaping and binding machines harvests the golden grain. The harvesting machine and the thresher have also been combined. On some of the greatest farms a huge complex machine makes its way through the standing grain, leaving behind it rows of bags, filled with threshed grain ready for the market.

With the aid of such machinery a few people can cultivate a great many acres. As a result, the country is thinly settled. The towns are few and far between. In most of them the principal building is the grain elevator, which holds the grain until it is ready to be shipped.

From the elevators the wheat goes to the flour mills. The largest of these are in Minneapolis, in the eastern part of the wheat belt. The flour in its turn goes to feed the many millions of people in all parts of the country.

For many years this country grew much more wheat than we needed, and we shipped great quantities to Europe. But each year our growing population needs more food, and our exports of this grain decrease steadily. Even now our farms grow but little more of this grain than is needed at home, and the time is almost at hand when we shall no longer send any of it abroad.

230. Cattle Raising and Meat Packing. Cattle raising, like wheat farming, is principally an industry of the West. As late as 1850 the states which raised the most cattle lay along the Atlantic coast. But to-day Texas and Iowa are in the lead, and Kansas and Nebraska follow closely.

As the eastern states became peopled more densely, cattle grazing was forced west. The cattle pastures were broken up into fields. The prairies of Illinois and Iowa became a vast cornfield. Eastern Kansas and Nebraska were turned into corn and wheat farms. Always the cattle had to give way to the grain. At last the farmers came to a strip of country where the rainfall was not enough to make grain growing profitable. This comparatively narrow strip stretches north in an irregular area of plains from western Texas to Montana. This region grows fine grass and has become the great grazing country of the United States. Here vast herds of cattle still roam on large ranches and are cared for by cowboys.

East of the ranch country lies the corn belt, in which Illinois and Iowa are the leading states. Cattle fatten better on corn than on any other food, and the meat of corn-fed stock brings the best prices.

The corn states have therefore taken up the raising and fattening of cattle on a tremendous scale. When western cattle leave the ranch they are generally not very heavy. Thousands of carloads are shipped into the corn country each year, there to be fattened before going to the packing houses.

The Department of Agriculture, at Washington, is now taking great pains to induce the boys, especially of the South, to make experiments in corn raising. Some wonderful results have been produced, and the South is in a fair way to take to the raising of corn.

The largest meat-packing plants are located in the corn belt at Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, and other cities. To-day meat packing is the greatest business of Chicago and many other large cities. A generation ago it had scarcely begun. But the packers learned to can meat, to use ice for cold storage, and, most important of all, the refrigerator car was invented.

By this last discovery it became possible to ship meat almost everywhere. Where before the packers had to sell their goods at home, now they have the world as a market. A steer raised on the western prairies may now be fattened for market in Illinois, slaughtered in Chicago, and served in New York, or sent to England or even to the Orient.

231. Coal and Iron. Next to the great farm crops, coal and iron are the most valuable products of our country. The coal that is mined in one year is worth five times as much as the gold and silver combined. Our iron mines yield as much wealth in one year as the gold mines do in three. Gold and silver are luxuries without which we could get along, but our great factories, railroads, and steamship lines could not exist without an abundance of iron and coal.

A hundred years ago there was almost no coal mined in this country. Now we use more of it than any other land, and almost a million men make a living by mining it.

At first most of the coal produced was the hard anthracite of eastern Pennsylvania. But this hard coal is found only in one small section of Pennsylvania, whereas great beds of soft coal stretch from Pennsylvania west to Washington. At present there is far more soft coal used than anthracite. Pennsylvania is the leading state in the production of both hard and soft coal, but West Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio are also great coal states. Generally, where there are productive coal mines, factories have been built, because most of them need a great deal of coal for fuel.

Iron was first worked by the colonists in the bogs of New England. Iron mining, however, did not become a great industry until the latter part of the last century. In that period the great iron "ranges" of Lake Superior were opened up. These are the largest deposits of iron ore in the world.

Most of the ore lies in Minnesota. Here, far up in the northern woods, thousands of men are blasting or digging out the red and rusty ore. Huge steam shovels load a car in a few minutes, and in a short while a trainload of ore is on its way to Duluth or Superior. From there it is carried by steamer east, most likely to one of the Ohio towns on Lake Erie. Here much of the ore is again loaded into cars and hauled to the Pittsburgh region, there to be smelted.

Pittsburgh has become the greatest iron and steel center of America. Enormous quantities of coal are mined here and used for smelting the iron ore that is shipped in. More people of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio make a living by mining coal and making steel and iron than anywhere else in America. Great blast furnaces melt the iron ore. Steel works turn out huge quantities of rail and sheet steel. Foundries make cast-iron products of all kinds. Vast shops are busily engaged in producing locomotives and machines of endless variety. Everywhere in this region are smoking chimneys and busy industrial plants, all supported by coal and iron. The southern states, Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee, also contain rich stores of coal and iron. These resources were little used during slavery days. Now, however, the southern states are digging coal for use in their great factories and cotton mills, or sending it abroad. Birmingham, Alabama, is one of the great coal and iron centers of the United States.

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