alley grows nearly one-fourth of the world's
wheat-crop. The wheat of this region and the Pacific coast lowlands
supplies the country with bread-stuffs, and exports the excess to
western Europe. The Gulf states, which produce three-fourths of the
world's cotton-crop, supply the whole country and about one-half the
rest of the world besides with cotton textiles. The grazing regions
produce an excess of meat for export; the western highlands furnish the
gold and silver necessary to carry on the enormous commerce.

In the last twenty years the imports of merchandise per capita varied
but little from $11.50; the exports per capita varied from about $12 to
more than $18.

=The Atlantic Coast-Plain and the Seaports.=--Throughout most of its
extent the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is bordered by a low
coast-plain. Along the northeastern coast of the United States the
coast-plain is very narrow; south of New York Bay it has a width in
some places of more than two hundred miles.

The existence of this plain has had a marked effect on the commercial
development of the country. The sinking or "drowning" of the northern
part of it has made an exceedingly indented coast. The drowned valleys,
enclosed by ridges and headlands, form the best of harbors, and nearly
all of them are northeast of New York Bay. South of New York Bay good
harbors are comparatively few. For the greater part they occur only when
old, buried river-channels permit approach to the shore.

The most important port of entry in these harbors is _New York_, and it
derives its importance from two factors. It has a very capacious harbor,
into which vessels drawing as much as thirty-five feet may enter; its
situation at the lower end of a series of valleys and passes makes it
almost a dead level route from the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard.
The importance of New York as the commercial gateway between European
ports and the food-producing region of the American continent began when
the Erie Canal was opened between the Great Lakes and tide-water. The
completion of the canal for the first time opened the rich farming lands
of the interior to European markets. Probably a greater tonnage of
freight is carried yearly over this route than over any other channel of
trade in the world.

Not far from two-thirds of the foreign commerce of the country passes
through the port of New York. The water-front of the city has an
aggregate length of about three hundre