(5) The Corn Belt.—Only 200 miles north of Clay County one is irr the midst of the corn belt, the richest agricultural section of the United States and perhaps of the world. The corn belt includes the prairie plains from Ohio westward through Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska (Fig. 1). The general levelness not only helps to make the soil deep and fertile, but facilitates transportation, favors the use of machinery, and causes the erosion of the fields to be small. The corn belt also has the advantage of an unusually good climate both for men and crops. The importance of agriculture in this belt is shown by the fact that four states have over 90 per cent of their total area in farms while Iowa has over 94 per cent.
Contrast McLean County in north central Illinois with Clay County in the Plateau only 300 miles away. The size of the average farm in McLean County is 166 acres, which means that most farms still consist of a quarter section, or a quarter of a square mile which was the size of the farms given by the government to the original settlers. Of these 166 acres 96 per cent are improved, which is an extremely large per centage. The average farm in 1919 was worth $62,000 or $322 per acre, so that the farmer who is almost always a native born white, is a comparatively rich man.
Column H indicates the beginning of• an unfortunate state of affairs. In the corn belt, as in the South (Fig. 42), tenancy has become common, but for a different reason, namely, the great prosperity of the farmers. Their land has yielded so abundantly and is located so near some of the great consuming centers such as Chicago and St. Louis that the farmers have grown rich. Many have retired and settled in the towns. Their sons have gone to college or to the city, and do not care to continue work ing on the farm. So the farms are rented to tenants. Some of these are people from the East, others are foreign immigrants, and some are people who have lately become interested in farming, or who have been unfortunate and have had to sell their farms. In most cases the tenants do not cultivate so carefully as the owners, and do not feel so much responsibility for the general good of the community. Hence the growth of tenancy, although a sign of prosperity, is also a warning of danger.
In the section of the table labeled " Products " the value of all crops in McLean County is seen to have averaged $6200 per farm in the census year 1919. Although that was a year of high prices, the income from crops on Illinois farms always averages large. The value per acre, $39, is not particularly high, to be sure, for the farmer cannot cul tivate so large an area very intensively, but even with extensive cultiva tion the total income is high. Since these corn-belt farmers each year
raise animals which are worth perhaps a quarter or more of the value given in Col. N, and since their hay is worth $420 per farm, their fruit and vegetables $125, and their dairy products $1050, the average farmer in 1919 had an income of about $2200 per year. aside from grain. Since 44 per cent of the land devoted to grain is sown with crops other than corn, it is evident that even if the corn crop should fail entirely the farm ers would still have a good income. In other words, an analysis of a typical county in the corn belt indicates that although corn is the chief crop, it furnishes decidedly less than half the yearly income. The good corn-belt farmers practice all-around agriculture in an almost ideal climate with an almost ideal soil, and with unsurpassed facilities for transportation. They are correspondingly safe, prosperous, and contented.
(6) The Wheat Belt.—The wheat belt of the Great Plains of America comprises the states from North Dakota southward to Oklahoma and even northern Texas, that is, the area which lies outside the corn belt and is heavily. shaded in Fig. 77. Cass County, North Dakota, the example in the table, shows marked contrast to the corn belt. The farms are twice as large but the total value per farm is only two-thirds as great, and per acre only a quarter as great as in Illinois. The percentage of native white farmers is much less, there being a large number of people from northern Europe. The number of farms operated by tenants though still large is only two-thirds as great as in McLean County. Inasmuch as the land is level the percentage of improved land is about as great as in the corn belt. The total income from crops in the wheat belt is greater than from the corn belt farms, but inasmuch as there is very little from dairy and poultry products the total income is less. A careful study of this particular example shows that the crops are not so well balanced as in the corn belt. About 67 per cent of all the land devoted to grain, or an average of 182 acres for each farm, is in wheat, and this one crop provides about half the farmer's income. Animals provide perhaps a tenth, vegetables, chiefly potatoes, another tenth, and hay and forage two-tenths. The average production of wheat is only 7 or 8 bushels per acre compared with 17 or 18 for the same product in many of the corn-belt counties. This illus trates the extent to which agriculture in the wheat belt not only tends toward the one-crop type but is extensive rather than intensive.