Some elevators in these centres can store as much as a million or
more bushels each. They are built of steel and equipped with steam-power
or electricity. The wheat is taken from grain-laden vessels or cars,
carried up into the elevator, and deposited in various bins, according to
its grade. On the opposite side of the elevator the wheat is reloaded into
cars or canal-boats.
In 1914 the United States produced nine hundred and thirty million
bushels, or between one-fourth and one-fifth of all the wheat produced in
the world.
CATTLE-RAISING
The third great industry is that of cattle-raising. To find the ranches we
will go a little farther west, perhaps to Kansas. A wide belt stretching
westward from the one-hundredth meridian to the foot-hills of the Rocky
Mountains is arid land. It includes parts of Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, the
Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Although the rainfall here is
mostly too light to grow corn and wheat without irrigation, these dry
plains have sufficient growth to support great herds of sheep and cattle,
and supply us with a large part of our beef. Cattle by the hundred
thousand feed on these vast unfenced regions.
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