See visualization below, "The Rise of the American Railway Union, 1893-94."
Stromquist, Generation of Boomers, 84-86, first analyzed this data using the ARU newspaper, the Railway Times.
Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, 2, 7, 9-12, 16-17, 19-20, 23-24, 70.
Whitaker, Feedlot Empire, 57-58, quote 63, 99-105, 115, 124-25.
This comparison excludes the fertile Red River Valley lands along the Minnesota border of North Dakota because they were anomalous in their fertility, the speed of their settlement in the 1870s, and their access to river as well as railroad transportation along the St. Paul and Pacific, which became part of Hills St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway. Hill claimed his road had carried 20 percent of the spring wheat crop of the entire United States in 1884 and would do better in 1885.