eat or corn? Out of that protracted contest has been
developed the principle of the public regulation of rates. The position
of these communities of farmers with interests so similar, forming
commonwealths so singularly homogeneous, has led to a reliance upon
State aid that is altogether unprecedented in new and sparsely settled
regions, where individualism has usually been dominant, and governmental
activity relatively inferior.

[Illustration: ANCIENT BLOCK-HOUSE, ALASKA.]

TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER INDUSTRIES.

But agriculture, while the basis of Northwestern wealth, is not the sole
pursuit. Transportation has become in these regions a powerful interest,
because of the vast surplus agricultural product to be carried away, and
of the great quantities of lumber, coal, salt, and staple supplies in
general, to be distributed throughout the new prairie communities. The
transformation of the pine forests into the homes of several million
people has, of course, developed marvelous sawmill and building
industries; and the furnishing of millions of new homes has called into
being great factories for the making of wooden furniture, iron stoves,
and all kinds of household supplies. In response to the demand for
agricultural implements and machinery with which to cultivate five
hundred million acres of newly utilized wild land, there have come into
existence numerous great establishments for the making of machines that
have been especially invented to meet the peculiarities and exigencies
of Western farm life.

Through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, Indian corn has become a
greater product in quantity and value than wheat; while in Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and North and South Dakota the wheat is decidedly the
preponderant crop. Although in addition to oats and barley, which
flourish in all the Western States, it has been found possible to
increase the acreage of maize in the northern tier, it is now believed
that the most profitable alternate crop in the latitude of Minneapolis
and St. Paul is to be flax. Already a region including parts of
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas has become the
most extensive area of flax culture in the whole world. The crop has
been produced simply for the seed, which has supplied large linseed oil
factories in Minneapolis, Chicago, and various Western places. But now
it has been discovered that the flax straw, which has heretofore been
allowed to rot in the fields as a v