This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES (concluded) 21. Agriculture remains to-day, as it was in the colonial Progress of period, the dominant industry of the United States. This gr cu" has been the natural result of the extensive area of fertile land with which the country is endowed, and its still relatively sparse population. Of its principal agricultural products, three, corn, white potatoes and tobacco, were indigenous to the New World. The first, because of the ease with which it may be grown on new land, has contributed more than any other plant to the material development of the country. In colonial days, corn, hay, wheat and potatoes were leading crops in the North; corn, tobacco, rice and indigo in the South. With the invention of the cotton gin, a machine for separating the cotton seed from the cotton fiber devised by Eli Whitney in 1794, and of spinning machinery capable of treating the short-fibered variety of cotton which alone flourished on the mainland, that product began to be, as it has ever since remained, "king" in the Southern States; but corn, hay, wheat and potatoes continued to be the staples of the North. As cities arose truck and dairy farming to supply their needs became profitable. Meantime the pressing back of the Indians encouraged the keeping of stock, since this is practicable only in localities where property can be protected. Agricultural methods, both North and South, prior to the Civil War, were exhausting to the soil, and the wearing out of old lands was a strong incentive urging settlers to bring the superior soils of the Mississippi Valley under cultivation. The cheapness of land and the dearness of labor have been conditions favorable to the invention and use of labor-saving tools and machines. American farmers we...