chief surplus cereal area of the United
States comprised a vast stretch of territory included in a semicircle
described by a southern and western sweep of a compass moving on a
radius extending from Duluth to Buffalo. Three-fourths of the
4,500,000,000 bushels of grain were raised in the twelve states
embraced in this territory. The ten most important markets in the
region, each of which was receiving annually from 10,000,000 to
300,000,000 bushels of grain, were Chicago, Minneapolis,
Duluth-Superior, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Toledo, Kansas City, Peoria,
Cincinnati and Detroit. From each of these points there radiated toward
the South and West a network of railways over which grain came from the
farming districts and over some of which there was a return movement of
flour and grain for domestic consumption or for exportation from Gulf
ports, while stretching to the eastward were numerous rail and water
lines by which an immense cereal and flour traffic was carried to the
manufacturing districts and exporting cities of the Atlantic coast. In
1900 the ten markets named received about 850,000,000 bushels of grain,
including flour, and shipped 650,000,000 bushels.

_Live Stock and Meat._ The extension of railroads to the grazing lands
of the West and the tremendous increase of corn production in the
Mississippi Valley after 1860 gave a great impetus to live stock
raising. Like the trade in grain the trade in live stock centered
around a series of great cities located centrally within easy reach of
the producing sections on one side and of the consuming region on the
other. To these primary markets the railroads carried thousands of car
loads of stock--horses and mules for distribution among the farms and
cities of the East and South, cattle, hogs and sheep for slaughter at
the packing houses at the primary markets, for distribution among the
farms of the Central States to be fattened for subsequent killing, or
for shipment to the slaughter pens of Eastern cities.

Until 1863 Cincinnati was the chief meat packing city of the country,
but in that year Chicago took the lead and has held it ever since, and
as the live stock industry shifted westward, St. Louis, Kansas City,
Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Omaha and St. Joseph in turn surpassed
Cincinnati in the business. The trade in meat was revolutionized during
this period by the introduction of the refrigerator car which made
possible the transportation of fresh meat for any distanc