679. Chief exports in 1913.—The principal items of the export trade of the United States in 1913 are given in the following table, with which should be compared the table in section 633.

680. Noteworthy changes since 1860.—The table shows that in one general respect the export trade of the country remained unchanged; seven items made up nearly two thirds of the immense total of the exports. While the country continued to rely upon a few great staples for the means of purchasing foreign wares, there had been since 1860 some noteworthy changes in the relative rank of the chief items and in the general character of the export trade. Cotton continued to be a leading item, and was still at the head of the list in 1913. In intervening years it had for a time yielded first place to breadstuffs; and another item associated with the agriculture of the northern and western states, provisions, had risen to prominence. This item includes dairy products as well as various kinds of meat, but does not include live animals. In general, however, the agriculture of the country no longer occupied the commanding position which it had once held in our export trade. In 1860 American agriculture supplied more than four fifths of the value of domestic exports of the country; in 1913 it supplied less than half. American industry had become diversified. While the country still depended largely on the raw products of its natural resources for the means of exchange in its foreign trade, it had broadened the field of its activities to include its mineral as well as its agricultural wealth, and had begun to sell an increasing share of its products in the form of manufactured or partly manufactured wares.

681. Change in character of the export trade.—The change in the general character of American export trade through this period can be best illustrated by comparing the whole group of foodstuffs, both raw and manufactured, with the group of industrial products (manufactures for further use in manufacturing, and manufactures ready for consumption). The table of figures shows that in the generation from 1880 to 1910 these two groups practically changed places in the part that they played in American export trade. The value of the total product of agriculture at home did not cease to grow, and indeed rose rapidly and steadily. The home market, however, grew so fast that the surplus available for export remained nearly stationary, and formed a constantly smaller part of the expanding total. The country began to look to its industrial resources to buy what it wanted from foreign lands.

682. Reasons for the increase of agricultural exports.—The great growth in the exports of northern agricultural products was due to the improvements in transportation, which opened the markets of the Old World to the food supplies produced so abundantly in the New. There is general agreement that no other part of the earth’s surface presents an area that can compare in quantity and quality of agricultural land with the Mississippi Valley. The larger part of this area still awaited cultivation at the close of the Civil War, and was brought under the plow in the period following it. Good land could be had free of charge by settlement under the homestead laws, or could be bought for prices little above what European farmers had to pay as rent or interest.

683. Improvement of agricultural implements.—The productiveness of American agriculture was furthered in this period by still another factor, the improvement of farm implements and machinery. American ingenuity, always proverbial, applied itself to the problem of getting the largest crops with the least labor, and devised means which were peculiarly suited to the conditions of the country and the times. The automatic reaper, on which inventors had long been working, had become a practical success by the middle of the century, and spread rapidly after its merits had been advertised at the Crystal Palace in 1851. An agricultural writer expressed himself as follows in 1866: “The reaper and mower have become ‘institutions’—a necessity, and no farmer of any standing ignores their use. The machinery for raking and loading hay in the field, and the unloading in the barn and on the stack, the potato digger, the corn cutter, the bean puller, the cultivator, the corn and bean planter and seed sower, threshing machines, corn shellers, fanning mills, straw and root cutters, hay rakes, tile ditchers, &c., &c., though not all of recent introduction, have all been greatly simplified and improved; in short every implement of farm husbandry, from the hoe to the reaper, has undergone various transformations for the better since the late change of the times....”

Every step in advance led to another. The reaper was displaced by the harvester, which accomplished the same results with less labor; and this in turn gave place to the twine binder, which showed still greater efficiency.

684. Wheat and flour.—The leading place among the breadstuffs exported fell to wheat. A large part of the American wheat crop had found its market in the southern States, before the Civil War. The closing of this market by war threw the whole surplus on Europe, and the wheat exports increased actually ninefold from 1860 to 1863. They declined for a time, when the South was opened to trade, but rose again as the soldiers from the disbanded armies and other colonists settled on the western prairies; and about 1880 grew to very large figures. The method of transportation was improved by building great elevators and introducing machinery to handle the grain at all points of transshipment; a system of grading and classification enabled the wheat to be carried in bulk, without regard to small specific lots; and the charges for storage and movement fell greatly. The instruments of modern transportation carried a ton of wheat from Minneapolis to Liverpool for less than it cost a farmer, thirty years before, to haul it by wagon a hundred miles.

For many years after 1860 most of the wheat was exported as grain, and was milled abroad. The introduction of European improvements, producing flour not by the old millstones but by gradual reduction between rollers, established again the reputation of American flour; and about half in value of the wheat export left the country in the manufactured form.

685. Indian corn.—No other cereal compared in value with wheat among the exports of the United States. In his “Indian corn speech,” delivered in 1877, Tilden predicted a great increase in the export of corn, which yields a much larger supply of food from a given area, and hence can be sold more cheaply. The corn crop was one of the most valuable assets of the country; it served not alone for food, but supplied also raw materials for the manufacture of starch, alcohol, glucose, etc. Its most important use, however, was for feeding and fattening stock, and its contribution to the exports of the country was mainly indirect, in the form of animals and animal products.

686. Stock, meat, and dairy products.—Live stock, chiefly beef cattle, were exported in large quantities in this period; the railroads offered every facility for bringing them to the seaboard, and special steamers transported them across the Atlantic in about ten days. Still more important, however, was the export of animal products. The refrigerator car, patented in 1868, enabled the meat of animals slaughtered in the West to be carried to market in all parts of the country, and stimulated the development of an immense packing industry in the regions where stock were raised and fattened. The export of fresh meat, which began about 1875, increased constantly in the last quarter of the century, and formed a considerable item. Of even greater value was the export of bacon and hams, while lard, tallow, pickled and canned meats contributed in varying proportions to the total of animal products exported. The dairy products occupied a less important place in foreign than in internal trade; and before the end of the period the export of these products had declined to insignificance.

687. Relative decline in importance of exports from the South.—The exports which have been considered hitherto come mainly, though by no means exclusively, from the northern and western States. The South contributed still one great item, cotton, but lost the commanding position in the export trade which it held before the Civil War. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the war was the cause of this change. It did, for a time, nearly annihilate the commerce of the South, and it absorbed so much of the capital as to cripple productive power for a considerable period. It swept away the system of slavery, and forced the people to adjust themselves to this most serious of changes. It left untouched, however, the natural resources of the country, and the New South, which has risen since 1880, devoted itself to the task of developing these resources with energy and success. Meanwhile, however, parts of the country which hardly counted in foreign trade before 1860, had been brought within reach of the seaboard, and had been settled by millions of active producers. The balance of commercial power was thus changed, not by the decline of the South but by the rise of other parts of the country.

688. Cotton.—English manufacturers, who had been in great straits for cotton during the Civil War, and had in vain endeavored to find the raw material in sufficient quantity and of satisfactory quality in other parts of the world, returned gladly to their former source of supply, the southern States. The cotton crop brought high prices, the records of cotton production and export in the years before the war were soon reached and surpassed, and the cotton culture continued to grow down to the end of the century. There have been years since 1890 when the price has fallen so low as to leave little profit for the producers; and it has often been suggested that the South was suffering from an over-production of its staple crop, and would fare better if it grew less cotton and more of other crops. Southern farmers were constantly advised to diversify their products. They seem to have followed this advice to a certain extent, and have begun to furnish the northern States with a considerable supply of food products, especially fruit and vegetables, in direct contrast with the course of trade before the Civil War when most of the food shipments were in the other direction. They seem, however, to have found no substitute for cotton as an export product, and have made that still their single great staple in foreign trade.

689. Export of mineral products: iron.—It has been asserted by an eminent geologist that North America is richer than any other continent in the mineral substances which have most contributed to the development of man. Every metal except tin has been found in quantities of economic importance. We must concern ourselves here chiefly with the one metal, iron, that which has held the chief place in economic progress in recent times, and in the production of which the United States has made surprising advance. Before 1860, as noted above, the United States had merely followed England at a respectful distance, in the methods of iron making. Since 1860 the iron makers of America have outstripped all competitors, in the efficiency of their methods and in the quantity of their output, and have made the United States the leading country of the world in iron production. The American iron industry has shown itself competent not only to meet the immense demands of the home market, but also to produce for export in competition with other countries the large amounts shown by the figures at the opening of this chapter.

690. Recent development of the American iron industry.—The following table shows that the advance of the iron industry was slow for a long time, and that its present power is of very recent growth.

Among the causes contributing to this result one of the most important has been the development of the rich ore deposits of the Lake Superior region and Alabama. Economies in handling the ore, by means of steam shovels and carriers, and in transporting it by water and railroad, have enabled it to be brought to the heart of the coal and coke regions at comparatively slight expense. In the reduction of the ore and in the various processes of manufacture the American iron makers in recent times have been quick to introduce improvements discovered in other countries; and have themselves contributed important devices by which the efficiency of the labor employed in iron manufacture has been greatly increased.

691. Machinery.—The least valuable part of the iron export is that which leaves the country in the raw or partly manufactured state. The single item of machinery (electrical, sewing machines, locomotives, typewriters, etc.), makes up nearly half the value of the iron and steel exports; while other items (agricultural implements, cars, bicycles, etc.), made up largely of iron and steel, would swell the importance of the exports of iron manufactures still further, if they were included in the list.

The Americans have recently taken the place of leaders among the machine builders of the world, and no country, however high it may have ranked in the past, can afford now to neglect the contributions offered by American machinists. The cheapness of raw materials, iron and steel, has aided the recent development of the American machine industry, but has not caused it. We must look further, to the ingenuity of inventors encouraged by a liberal patent system, and to the genius of business leaders who have known how to make use of the contributions of technical science to industrial efficiency. We must recognize that the Americans got some positive benefit from the fact that they entered late into this part of the field of production. They were not tied to the past by heavy investments, or by methods sanctified by tradition. Finally, we must note again the stimulus of the American market, the broadest and richest in the world, constantly expanding and offering unparalleled rewards to those who met its demands for improved instruments.

692. Copper.—Copper is a metal which has long been prized as one of the components of brass, and which has been still more highly valued since the development of electrical industry has increased the field of its use. Until after the middle of the century, however, the United States had to rely upon foreign countries, chiefly Chile, for most of its supply, and the importance of copper as an article of export dates from recent times. The opening of the mines of the Lake Superior region, the richest copper mines of the world, enabled the country by 1860 to supply the demand for this metal from native sources, and the later development, including new sources of supply in Arizona and Montana, has furnished since 1880 a large surplus for sale abroad. The copper mines of Michigan, which reach a depth of nearly a mile, are said to be the best examples in the world of skilful and economical mining, and improved processes of reduction have made available copper ores which formerly would not pay the working.

693. Petroleum.—Even in colonial times the presence of mineral oil in the country was known by the film which collected on the surface of certain springs, and which took fire when a light was applied to it. A well of oil which spouted fifty feet was discovered on the bank of the Cumberland River in 1830, but, as stated in a book published in 1853, “it was found to be useful only medicinally, and is bottled and exported for that purpose.” The interest in this new product, which seemed to offer possibilities beyond its use as a proprietary medicine, led to the organization in 1854 of a “Rock Oil Company”; and the first oil well was driven near Titusville, Pa., four years later. Soon after 1860 the export of oil to foreign countries began, with little idea that the trade thus started was to become one of the great features of American foreign commerce. Mineral oil was in 1913 one of the leading exports of the country, and would take a still larger place in the exports as given at the beginning of this chapter if various by-products, such as paraffin, were included in the figures.

694. Development of the oil industry.—The chief obstacle to the development of the oil trade in its early years was the difficulty of transportation. The extension of the railroad system after 1860 furnished the means of bringing the oil to market with profit, and in recent times the transportation and manufacture of oil products have been developed to wonderfully high efficiency. Tank cars have given place to pipe lines; refineries have been extended and perfected, that the reduction of the crude oil might be carried on with the greatest economy and with full utilization of all by-products; and the market for oil products at home and abroad has been enlarged by a great reduction of prices.

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