4
Modern Business Geography
TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES
Still another important reason for our leadership as a farming coun-
try is the ease with which the crops are marketed.
How our system of transportation aids farming. Railways and
sometimes waterways take the farm products quite cheaply to most
parts of our country where they are needed either as food or as raw
materials for manufacturing industries. For products to be exported,
there are excellent harbors facing the east, south, and west ; and Europe,
the most important of the world’s markets, is not far from our shores.
Our transportation facilities, however, are still far from perfect;
for though the railroads are excellent, the building of good roads has
only begun. Fortunately the farms in most sections rarely lie more
than eight or ten miles from the railroads, and automobiles are rapidly
becoming the farmer’s means of taking his products to market.
In a new country one of the most difficult problems is to establish
means of cheap transportation so that the surplus products can be
marketed profitably. Millions of bushels of wheat were allowed to
spoil in the early days of our western states and of the Canadian
West, because the cost of hauling over the roadless prairies to the
distant railroad was more than the wheat was worth.
GOVERNMENT AID TO FARMING
In advanced countries the government tries to aid farming in every
possible way. Credit must be given to the Department of Agricul-
ture of our own government for its work in helping the country to a
leading position in agriculture.
Work of the Department of Agriculture. Members of the De-
partment are sent to foreign countries to seek new kinds of seeds,
plants, and breeds of animals better suited to the climate and soil
of the various parts of the country than those now grown here.
Other members are scattered over the country at state and Fed-
eral stations, where they raise all kinds of useful plants and animals
and try to improve them. Some investigators are working out ways
of protecting crops from frost and of suppressing animal diseases and
the ravages of insect pests. Still others study weather and soils in
relation to crops.
Educational work. State governments as well as the national
government take an active part in aiding the farmer. Most of them
have departments of agriculture, and also agricultural colleges,
which have long been partly supported by the Federal government.
In many states the elements of agriculture are taught in the schools.
