"For all practical purposes, wheat is civilization. It produces what we euphemistically call the staff of life, a staff which has recently been behaving like a boomerang...By the same token, wheat makes politics and has always made them. Whether you turn to ancient Rome, Egypt or Mesopotamia, or advert to modern times, you will find wheat working political earthquakes. Wheat, needed by England, won the Civil War for the North; then the American transcontinental lines opened the wheat empire of North America, and our wheat wrecked agriculture in Central Europe. Austria-Hungary took to growing hogs, instead, and agricultural experts swiftly decided that Serbian swine were unsanitary, laid down an embargo and started a political avalanche that led straight to Serajevo."