n was taking
place in agriculture. Until 1860 the chief staples sold by America were
cotton and tobacco. With the advance of the frontier, corn and wheat
supplanted them both in agrarian economy. The West became the granary of
the East and of Western Europe. The scoop shovel once used to handle
grain was superseded by the towering elevator, loading and unloading
thousands of bushels every hour. The refrigerator car and ship made the
packing industry as stable as the production of cotton or corn, and gave
an immense impetus to cattle raising and sheep farming. So the meat of
the West took its place on the English dinner table by the side of bread
baked from Dakotan wheat.

=Aid in American Economic Independence.=--The effects of this economic
movement were manifold and striking. Billions of dollars' worth of
American grain, dairy produce, and meat were poured into European
markets where they paid off debts due money lenders and acquired
capital to develop American resources. Thus they accelerated the
progress of American financiers toward national independence. The
country, which had timidly turned to the Old World for capital in
Hamilton's day and had borrowed at high rates of interest in London in
Lincoln's day, moved swiftly toward the time when it would be among the
world's first bankers and money lenders itself. Every grain of wheat and
corn pulled the balance down on the American side of the scale.

=Eastern Agriculture Affected.=--In the East as well as abroad the
opening of the western granary produced momentous results. The
agricultural economy of that part of the country was changed in many
respects. Whole sections of the poorest land went almost out of
cultivation, the abandoned farms of the New England hills bearing solemn
witness to the competing power of western wheat fields. Sheep and cattle
raising, as well as wheat and corn production, suffered at least a
relative decline. Thousands of farmers cultivating land of the lower
grade were forced to go West or were driven to the margin of
subsistence. Even the herds that supplied Eastern cities with milk were
fed upon grain brought halfway across the continent.

=The Expansion of the American Market.=--Upon industry as well as
agriculture, the opening of vast food-producing regions told in a
thousand ways. The demand for farm machinery, clothing, boots, shoes,
and other manufactures gave to American industries such a market as even
Hamilton had never forese