American wheat, produced by men such as Dick Garland, poured from the prairies into the grain elevators of Chicago, where it was loaded onto rail cars and carried by the great trunk lines to the eastern seaboard for export. Additional grain arrived in Europe from California by ship. As harvests increased and transportation costs fell, American wheat displaced more expensive grain from central and Eastern Europe. This endangered Austrian banks, which were heavily invested in the export trade in cattle and wheat that the Americans were undercutting.
