available by the ,core ,historical ,literature of ,agriculture 7,,chla71 ,albert ,r4 ,mann ,library1 ,cornell ,university 7http3_/_/chla4library4cornell4edu_/7 and ,internet ,archive_/,american ,libraries 7http3_/_/www4archive4org_/details_/amer icana7 file which includes the original illustrations4 ,see #cbgjb-;h4htm or #cbgjb-;h4zip3 7https3_/_/www4gutenberg4org_/cache_/epu b_/#cbgjb_/pg#cbgjb-;images4html7 or 7https3_/_/www4gutenberg4org_/files_/#cb gjb_/cbgjb-;h4zip7 ,images of the original pages are available through ,internet ,archive_/,american ,libraries4 ,see http3_/_/www4archive4org_/details_/roman ceofreaper#jj;cass or ,core ,historical ,literature of ,agriculture 7,,chla71 ,albert ,r4 ,mann ,library1 ,cornell ,university4 ,see http3_/_/chla4library4cornell4edu_/cgi_/ t_/text_/text-idx8cchla2idno#bicfdhj ,,the ,,romance ,,of ,,the ,,reaper ,illustration3 ,a ,,chicago ,,mower ,,in ,,siberia ,,the ,,romance ,,of ,,the ,,reaper by ,,herbert ,n4 ,,casson ,author of ,the ,romance of ,steel4 ,illustrated from ,photographs ,and he gave it for his opinion1 that whoever could make two ears of corn1 or two blades of grass1 to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before1 would deserve better of mankind1 and do more essential service to his country1 than the whole race of politicians put together4 --,dean ,swift4 ,new ,york ,doubleday1 ,page ,company #aijh ,copyright1 #aijg1 #aijh1 by ,everybody's ,magazine ,copyright1 #aijh1 by ,doubleday1 ,page ,company ,published1 ,may1 #aijh ,all ,rights ,reserved1 ,including ,that of ,translation into ,foreign ,languages1 ,including the ,scandinavian ,,to ,,the ,,farmers ,,of ,,the ,,united ,,states ,,whose ,,energy ,,and ,,progressiveness ,,have ,,made ,,this ,,wonder-,,story ,,come ,,true ,,preface ,this is the story of our most useful business4 ,it is a medley of mechanics1 millionaires1 kings1 inventors and farmers2 and it is intended for the average man and woman1 boy and girl4 ,although ,i have taken great pains to make this book accurate1 ,i have written it in the fashion of romance1 because it tells a story that every ,american ought to know4 ,the fact is that the ,united ,states owes much more to the ,reaper than it owes to the factory or the railroad or the ,wall ,street ,stock ,exchange4 ,without the magical grain machinery that gives us cheap bread1 the whole new structure of our civilisation1 with all its dazzling luxuries and refinements1 would be withered by the blight of ,famine4 ,this may sound strange and sensational to those who have been bred in the cities1 but it is true4 ,the reaper has done more to chase the wolf from the door--to abolish poverty and drudgery and hand-labour1 than any other invention of our day4 ,it has done good without any backwash of evil4 ,it has not developed any new species of social parasite1 as so many modern improvements have done4 ,it has not added one dollar to the unclean hoard of a stock-gambler1 nor turned loose upon the public a single idle millionaire4 ,the reaper is our best guarantee of prosperity4 ,in spite of our periodical panics1 which prove1 by the way1 that the men who provide us with banks are not as efficient as the men who provide us with bread1 we are certain to rebound into prosperity and social progress as long as we continue to make three hundred harvesting machines every working day--one every two minutes4 ,the rising flood of wheat is bound to submerge the schemers and the pessimists alike4 ,and it is the reaper1 too1 which has done most to make possible a nobler human race1 by lessening the power of that ancient motive--the ,search for ,food4 ,every harvester that clicks its way through the yellow grain means more than bread4 ,it means more comfort1 more travel1 more art and music1 more books and education4 ,in this large fact lies the real ,romance of the ,reaper4 ,in gathering the material for this book ,i have been greatly assisted by ,messrs4 ,e4 ,j4 ,baker1 of the ,farm ,implement ,news2 ,b4 ,b4 ,clarke1 of the ,american ,thresherman2 ,ralph ,emerson1 of ,rockford1 ,ill2 ,c4 ,w4 ,marsh1 of ,de ,kalb1 ,ill42 ,edwin ,d4 ,metcalf and ,t4 ,m4 ,osborne1 of ,auburn1 ,n4 ,y41 ,henry ,wallace1 of ,wallace's ,farmer1 ,william ,n4 ,whiteley1 of ,springfield1 ,ohio2 and the officials of the ,international ,harvester ,company1 who made it possible for me to have free access to all of its works and to familiarise myself with its manner of doing business in this country and abroad4 ,also1 ,i take pleasure in reproducing the following editorial note from ,everybody's ,magazine1 in which four chapters of this book were first printed3 ,president ,roosevelt in his message of ,december #crd said3 ',modern industrial conditions are such that combination is not only necessary1 but inevitable4444 ,corporation and labour union alike have come to stay4 ,each1 if properly managed1 is a source of good1 and not evil4' ,if capital combinations can be good1 there must be some that are good4 ,would it not be a proper service to the ,american people to tell them of a trust that1 while it had reaped the economical advantages of combination1 had yet played fair with the public and with its competitors8 ,hence this story of the great ,harvester combine4 ,before we began to publish ,mr4 ,casson's articles1 we followed up his investigations with a thorough inquiry of our own1 and we are bound to say that the business methods of this institution seem to conform to the highest standards of fair play and square dealing4 ,the ,international ,harvester combine is not a tariff trust4 ,its members surrendered dominance in their own business only when the trend of 'modern industrial conditions' and overstrenuous competition made combination 'not only necessary1 but inevitable4' ,the inside history of the ',morganising' of this group of fighters1 as narrated here1 is as humorous as it is fascinating4 ,,contents ,,page ,preface vii ,,chapter ,i4 ,the ,story of ,mc,cormick #c ,,ii4 ,the ,story of ,deering #dh ,,iii4 ,the ,international ,harvester ,company #ij ,,iv4 ,the ,american ,harvester ,abroad #abf ,v4 ,the ,harvester and the ,american ,farmer #afa ,,illustrations ,a ,chicago mower in ,siberia ,frontispiece ,,facing ,,page ,cyrus ,hall ,mc,cormick #ab ,the ,virginian birthplace of the ,mc,cormick reaper #bb ,a model of the first practical reaper #bg ,william ,deering #ea ,william ,n4 ,whiteley #ec ,c4 ,w4 ,marsh #ec ,john ,f4 ,appleby #ec ,e4 ,h4 ,gammon #ec ,asa ,s4 ,bushnell #fj ,benjamin ,h4 ,warder #fj ,hon4 ,thomas ,mott ,osborne #fj ,david ,m4 ,osborne #fj ,a self-binder in ,scotland1 with the ,wallace ,monument in the background #fb ,cyrus ,hall ,mc,cormick1 ,jr4 #he ,charles ,deering #he ,harold ,mc,cormick #ib ,j4 ,j4 ,glessner #ib ,w4 ,h4 ,jones #ib ,james ,deering #ib ,american self-binders on the estate of ,president ,fallires1 in ,france #ace ,king ,alphonso of ,spain driving an ,american seeder #ach ,bismarck having his first view of an ,american self-binder #adg ,an ,american harvester at work in ,argentina #aea ,gathering in a ,finland harvest #aed ,in the ancient fields of ,algiers #aeh ,the ,romance of the ,reaper ,the ,romance of the ,reaper ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,mccormick ,this ,romance of the ,reaper is a true fairy tale of ,american life--the story of the magicians who have taught the civilised world to gather in its harvests by machinery4 ,on the old ,european plan--snip--snip--snipping with a tiny hand-sickle1 every bushel of wheat required three hours of a man's lifetime4 ,to-day1 on the new ,american plan--riding on the painted chariot of a self-binding harvester1 the price of wheat has been cut down to ten minutes a bushel4 ,when ,i first went into the harvest field1 so an ,illinois farmer told me1 it took ten men to cut and bind my grain4 ,now our hired girl gets on the seat of a self-binder and does the whole business4 ,this magical machinery of the wheat-field solves the mystery of prosperity4 ,it explains the ,new ,farmer and the miracles of scientific agriculture4 ,it accounts for the growth of great cities with their steel mills and factories4 ,and it makes clear how we in the ,united ,states have become the best fed nation in the world4 ,hard as it may be for this twentieth century generation to believe1 it is true that until recently the main object of all nations was to get bread4 ,life was a ,search for ,food--a desperate postponement of famine4 ,cut the ,kings and their retinues out of history and it is no exaggeration to say that the human race was hungry for ten thousand years4 ,even of the ,black ,bread--burnt and dirty and coarse1 there was not enough2 and the few who were well fed took the food from the mouths of slaves4 ,even the nations that grew ,galileo and ,laplace and ,newton were haunted by the ghosts of ,hunger4 ,merrie ,england was famine-swept in #acae1 #acba1 #acfi1 #adch1 #adhb1 #aebg1 #afcj1 #affa1 and #agji4 ,to have enough to eat1 was to the masses of all nations a dream--a ,millennium of ,prosperity4 ,this long ,age of ,hunger outlived the great nations of antiquity4 ,why8 ,because they went at the problem of progress in the wrong way4 ,if ,marcus ,aurelius had invented the reaper1 or if the ,gracchi had been inventors instead of politicians1 the story of ,rome would have had a happier ending4 ,but ,rome said3 ,the first thing is empire4 ,egypt said3 ,the first thing is fame4 ,greece said3 ,the first thing is genius4 ,not one of them said3 ,the first thing is ,bread4 ,in the ,egyptian quarter of the ,british ,museum1 standing humbly in a glass case between two mummied ,pharaohs1 is a little group of farm utensils4 ,a fractured wooden plough1 a rusted sickle1 two sticks tied together with a leathern thong1 and several tassels that had hung on the horns of the oxen4 ,a rummaging professor found these in the tomb of ,seti ,i41 who had his will on the banks of the ,nile three thousand years ago4 ,egypt had a most elaborate government at that time4 ,she had an army and navy1 an art and literature4 ,yet her bread-tools were no better than those of the barbarians whom she despised4 ,it is one of the most baffling mysteries of history1 that agriculture--the first industry to be learned1 was the last one to be developed4 ,for thousands of years the wise men of the world absolutely ignored the problems of the farm4 ,a farmer remained either a serf or a tenant4 ,he was a stolid drudge--brother to the ox4 ,even the masterful old ,pilgrim ,fathers had no ploughs at all--nothing but hoes and sharp sticks1 for the first twelve years of their pioneering4 ,fifty-five years of ,american ,independence went by before the first reaper clicked its way clumsily into fame1 on a backwoods farm in ,virginia4 ,at that time1 #ahca1 the ,american people were free1 but they held in their hands the land-tools of slaves4 ,they had to labour and sweat in the fields1 with the crude implements that had been produced by ages of slavery4 ,for two generations they tried to build up a prosperous ,republic with sickles1 flails1 and wooden ploughs1 and they failed4 ,there are men and women now alive who can remember the hunger year of #ahcg1 when there were wheat bounties in ,maine and bread riots in ,new ,york ,city4 ,flour mills were closed for lack of wheat4 ,starving men fell in the streets of ,boston and ,philadelphia4 ,mobs of labourers1 maddened by the fear of famine1 broke into warehouses and carried away sacks of food as though they were human wolves4 ,even in the ,middle ,west--the prairie paradise of farmers--many a family fought against ,death with the serf's weapon of ,black ,bread4 ,enterprise was not then an ,american virtue4 ,the few men who dared to suggest improvements were persecuted as enemies of society4 ,the first iron ploughs were said to poison the soil4 ,the first railroad was torn up4 ,the first telegraph wires were cut4 ,the first sewing-machine was smashed4 ,and the first man who sold coal in ,philadelphia was chased from the ,state as a swindler4 ,even the railway was a dangerous toy4 ,the telegraph was still a dream in the brain of ,morse4 ,john ,deere had not invented his steel plough1 nor ,howe his sewing-machine1 nor ,hoe his printing-press4 ,there were no stoves nor matches nor oil-lamps4 ,petroleum was peddled as a medicine at a dollar a bottle4 ,iron was #ge a ton4 ,money was about as reliable as mining stocks are to-day2 and all the savings in all the banks would not now buy the chickens in ,iowa4 ,our total exports were not more than we paid last year for diamonds and champagne4 ,chicago was a twelve-family village4 ,there was no ,west nor ,middle ,west4 ,not one grain of wheat had been grown in ,minnesota1 the ,dakotas1 ,nebraska1 ,colorado1 ,kansas1 ,washington1 ,nevada1 ,idaho1 ,montana1 ,new ,mexico1 ,oregon1 ,utah1 ,arizona1 ,wyoming1 ,oklahoma or ,texas4 ,the whole structure of civilisation1 as we know it1 was unbuilt2 and most of its architects and builders were unborn or in the cradle4 ,spencer was eleven years of age2 ,virchow was ten2 ,pasteur nine2 ,huxley six2 ,berthelot four2 and as for ,haeckel1 ,carnegie1 ,morgan1 ,edison and their generation1 they had not yet appeared in the land of the living4 ,then came the ,reaper4 ,this unappreciated machine1 about which so little has been written1 changed the face of the world4 ,it moved the civilised nations up out of the bread line4 ,it made prosperity possible2 and elevated the whole struggle for existence to a higher plane4 ,life is still a race--always will be2 but not for bread4 ,the lowest prizes now are gold watches and steam yachts and automobiles4 ,even the hobo at the back door scorns bread1 unless we apologise for it with meat and jam4 ,it is so plentiful--this clean1 white bread1 that it is scarcely an article of commerce any longer4 ,in our hotels it is thrown in free of charge1 as though it were a pinch of salt or a glass of water4 ,there is no penn'orth of bread in the bill1 as there was in ,falstaff's day4 ,seven bushels of wheat apiece6 ,that is what we eighty-five million people ate in #aijf--twelve thousand million loaves of bread4 ,such a year of feasting was new in the history of the world4 ,and yet we sent a thousand million dollars' worth of food to other nations4 ,suppose that bread were money1 just for one day6 ,what a lesson it would be on the social value of the reaper6 ,thirty loaves would be the day's pay of a labourer--as much as he could carry on his back4 ,two loaves for a cigar--three for a shave--five for a bunch of violets--forty for a theatre ticket--a hundred for a bottle of champagne6 ,is there anything cheaper than bread8 ,the reaper was ,america's answer to ,malthus--who scared ,england into abolishing the ,corn ,laws by his proclamation that the ultimate check to population is the lack of food4 ,what would that well-meaning pessimist think were he now alive1 if he were told that the human race is growing wheat at the rate of ten bushels a year per family8 ,or that ,minnesota and the ,dakotas 7names that the world of his day had never heard7 produce enough wheat to feed all the people of ,england8 ,the reaper was ,america's answer to the world's demand for democracy4 ,instead of bread riots and red flags and theories of an earthly paradise in which nobody worked but the ,government1 the ,united ,states invented a machine that gave democracy a chance4 ,instead of a guillotine to cut off the heads of the privileged people who ate too much1 it produced a reaper that gave everybody enough4 ,this was not a complete answer1 nor will there ever be one1 to the riddle of liberty1 equality and fraternity4 ,but it was so much better than theories and riots that it helped to persuade twenty-five million immigrants to cross the ocean and become shareholders in the ,american ,republic4 ,if it were possible to trace back a strand in the twisted thread of cause and effect1 we would find that many a factory and steel-mill owes its origin to the flood of wheat-money that came to us from ,europe in #ahhj and #ahha--;every dollar of it made by the humble harvester4 ,without this obedient slave of wood and steel1 all our railroads and skyscrapers and automobiles could not save us from famine4 ,if we had to reap our grain in the same way as the ,romans did1 it would take half the men in the ,united ,states to feed us on bread alone1 to say nothing of the rest of the menu4 ,like most great things1 the reaper was born among humble people and in a humble way4 ,it was crude at first and dogged by failure4 ,no one man made it4 ,it was the product of a hundred brains4 ,the exact truth about its origin is not known and never will be4 ,what few facts there were have been torn and twisted by the bitter feuds of the ,patent ,office4 ,every letter and document that exists is controversial4 ,so ,i cannot say that the story1 as ,i give it1 is entirely true1 but only that it is as near as ,i can get to the truth after six months of investigation4 ,there is evidence to show that ,cyrus ,hall ,mc,cormick completed a practical reaper in #ahca1 although the first reaper patent was taken out in #ahcc by an inventive seaman named ,obed ,hussey1 of ,baltimore4 ,the young ,mc,cormick did not secure his patent until #ahcd2 but he had given a public exhibition in ,virginia three years before4 ,there were nearly a hundred people who saw this exhibition4 ,not one of them is now alive2 and the story as told by their children has many little touches of imagination4 ,but in the main1 it is very likely to be true4 ,it was in the fall of #ahca when ,cyrus ,mc,cormick hitched four horses to his unwieldy machine and clattered out of the barnyard into a field of wheat nearby4 ,horses shied and pranced at the absurd object1 which was unlike anything else on the face of the earth4 ,dogs barked4 ,small boys yelled4 ,farmers1 whose backs were bent and whose fingers were scarred from the harvest labour1 gazed with contemptuous curiosity at the queer contraption which was expected to cut grain without hands4 ,illustration3 ,,cyrus ,,hall ,mc,c,o,r,m,i,c,k ,a little group of ,negro slaves had spasms of uncomprehending delight in one corner of the field1 not one of them guessing that ,massa ,mc,cormick's comical machine was cutting at the chains that bound their children4 ,and a noisy crowd of white labourers followed the reaper up and down the field with boisterous enmity2 for here was an invention which threatened to deprive them of the right to work--the precious right to work sixteen hours a day for three cents an hour4 ,the field was hilly and the reaper worked badly4 ,it slewed and jolted along1 cutting the grain very irregularly4 ,seeing this1 the owner of the field--a man who was ,ruff by name and rough by nature1 rushed up to ,mc,cormick and shouted--,here6 ,this won't do4 ,stop your horses6 ,your machine is rattling the heads off my wheat4 ,it's a humbug1 bawled one of the labourers4 ,give me the old cradle yet1 boys6 exclaimed a round-shouldered farmer4 ,the ,negroes turned handsprings with delight2 and the whole jeering mob gathered around the discredited machine4 ,just then a fine-looking man rode up on horseback4 ,the crowd made way as he came near1 for they recognised him as the ,honourable ,william ,taylor--a conspicuous politician of that day4 ,pull down the fence and cross over into my field1 he said to young ,mc,cormick4 ,i'll give you a fair chance to try your machine4 ,mc,cormick quickly accepted the offer1 drove into ,taylor's field1 which was not as hilly1 and cut the grain successfully for four or five hours4 ,although the ,united ,states had been established more than fifty years before1 this was the first grain that had ever been cut by machinery4 ,the ,fathers of the ,republic had eaten the bread of hand-labour all their lives1 and never dreamed that the human race would ever find a better way4 ,when he arrived home that evening1 ,cyrus thought that his troubles were over4 ,he had reaped six acres of wheat in less than half a day--as much as six men would have done by the old-fashioned method4 ,he had been praised as well as jeered at4 ,your reaper is a success1 said his father1 and it makes me feel proud to have a son do what ,i could not do4 ,two ,big ,men had given him their approval--,william ,taylor and a ,professor ,bradshaw1 of the ,female ,academy in the town of ,lexington1 ,virginia4 ,the professor1 who was a pompous and positive individual1 made a solemn investigation of the reaper1 and then announced1 in slow1 loud1 and emphatic tones--,that--machine--is--worth--a hundred--thousand--dollars4 ,but if ,cyrus ,mc,cormick hoped to wake up the following morning and find himself rich and famous1 he was roughly disappointed4 ,the local excitement soon died out1 and in a few days the men in the village store were discussing ,webster's last speech against ,nullification and ,andrew ,jackson's war against the bankers4 ,one old woman expressed the general feeling by saying that young ,mc,cormick's reaper was a right1 smart curious sort of thing1 but it won't come to much4 ,mc,cormick was at this time a youth of twenty-two4 ,he had been one of four pink1 helpless babies1 born in #ahji1 who became1 each in his own world1 the greatest leader of his day--,darwin1 ,gladstone1 ,lincoln1 and ,mc,cormick4 ,like ,lincoln1 ,mc,cormick first learned to breathe in a long cabin--but in ,virginia4 ,he was bred from a fighting race4 ,his father had wrenched a living from the rocks of ,virginia for his family of nine4 ,his grandfather had fought the ,english in the ,revolution4 ,his great-grandfather had been an ,indian fighter in ,pennsylvania2 and his great-great-grandfather battled with a flint-lock against the soldiers of ,james ,,ii41 at the siege of ,londonderry4 ,the ,mc,cormick family1 in #ahji1 had a good deal of what was then called prosperity4 ,they had enough to eat--a roof that kept out the rain--#a1hjj acres of land1 or near-land--three saw-mills--two flour-mills1 and a distillery4 ,they had very little money1 because there was little to be had4 ,in the whole ,united ,states there was barely as much money as would buy half of the ,new ,york ,subway4 ,the first ,american ,mc,cormicks had a thousand dollars or more when they resolved to leave ,ireland1 and they were ,scotch enough to invest the whole amount in linen1 which they sold at a high profit in ,philadelphia4 ,this capital enabled them to acquire a small stock of books1 tools1 and comforts1 which were passed along from father to son4 ,robert ,mc,cormick--the father of ,cyrus1 was himself a remarkable ,virginian4 ,he was quick with his hands in shaping iron and wood4 ,in fact1 he was fairly famous in his county as the inventor of a hemp-brake1 a clover-sheller1 a bellows and threshing machine4 ,his mind was greedy for knowledge2 and it was his habit1 when the seven children were asleep1 to explore into the mysteries of astronomy until his candle had flickered its life out4 ,twenty or more of his letters1 which ,i have seen1 are well written and with a fine use of bookish words4 ,the one persistent ambition of his life was to invent a reaper4 ,it is also true1 and a titbit of a fact for those who believe in prenatal influences1 that during the year in which ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick was born1 his father first began the actual construction of a reaping machine4 ,especially during the harvest months1 the topic of conversation in the ,mc,cormick home was whether the dream of reaping grain with horses could ever come true4 ,reaper1 was one of the first words that baby ,cyrus learned to say2 and his favourite play-toy1 when he grew older1 was the wreck of his father's reaper that wouldn't reap1 which lay in rusty disgrace near the barn-door4 ,often ,i have seen ,robert ,mc,cormick standing over his machine1 said one of his neighbours4 ,he would be studying and thinking1 drawing down his under lip1 as was his habit when he was puzzling over anything4 ,his friends ridiculed him for wasting so much time on a foolish toy1 until he became half ashamed of it himself and quit his experimenting in the daytime4 ,but at night1 he and ,cyrus hammered away in the little log workshop1 as though they were a pair of conspirators4 ,the romantic mystery of these midnight labours made an indelible mark on the brain of the boy ,cyrus4 ,he grew up to be serious and self-contained--quite unlike the boys of the neighbourhood4 ,he was not popular and never cared to be4 ,cyrus was a natural mechanical genius from a child1 said ,john ,cash1 who worked on the ,mc,cormick farm4 ,he invented the best hillside plough ever used in this country4 ,he and his father would lock themselves up in the shop and work for hours on a reaping machine4 ,the neighbours thought they were both unbalanced to have the idea of cutting grain with horses4 ,cyrus was always busy making or mending some piece of machinery4 ,he abhorred the drudgery of the farm2 but delighted in any work that had an idea behind it4 ,he surprised his teacher one morning by bringing to school a twenty-inch globe of wood1 which turned on its axis as the earth does1 and had the seas and continents outlined in ink4 ,that young fellow is ahead of me1 said the amazed teacher4 ,at fifteen ,cyrus had invented a new grain cradle4 ,at twenty-one he improved a machine which his father had made to break hemp4 ,and at twenty-two this young country-boy1 who had never seen a college1 a city1 or a railroad1 constructed the first practical ,american reaper4 ,it was a clumsy makeshift--as crude as a ,red ,river ox-cart2 but it was built on the right lines4 ,it was not at all handsome or well made or satisfactory2 but it was a reaper that reaped4 ,but ,mc,cormick soon discovered that it was not enough to invent a reaper4 ,what the world needed was a man who was strong and dominating enough to force his reaper upon the unwilling labourers of the harvest fields4 ,tenacity6 ,absolute indifference to defeat6 ,the lust for victory that makes a man unconscious of the blows he gives or takes6 ,this was what was needed1 and what ,cyrus ,mc,cormick possessed1 to a greater degree1 perhaps1 than any other man in ,american history4 ,tenacity6 ,it was in his blood4 ,back of him was the hardiest breed that was ever mixed into the ,american blend--the pick of the ,scots who fought their way to the ,united ,states by way of ,ireland4 ,these ,irish ,scots1 few as they were1 led the way across the ,alleghanies1 founded ,pittsburgh1 made a trail to ,texas1 and put five ,presidents in the ,white ,house4 ,and tenacity was bred1 as well as born1 into ,cyrus ,mc,cormick4 ,he went barefooted as a boy1 not for lack of shoes1 but to make him tough4 ,i want my boys to know how to endure hardship1 said his mother4 ,he sat on a slab bench in the little log school house and learned to read from the ,book of ,genesis4 ,he sang ,psalms with forty verses1 on ,sundays1 and sat as still as a graven image during the three-hour sermons1 for his father was a ,presbyterian of the old ,covenanter brand4 ,so it came to pass that ,cyrus ,mc,cormick clung to his reaper1 as ,john ,knox had to his ,bible4 ,his whole soul was wrapped up in it1 said one of his neighbours4 ,he grew as indifferent to the rough jokes of the farmers as ,martin ,luther was to the sneers of the village priests4 ,the making of reapers became more than a business4 ,it was a creed--a religion--a new eleventh commandment4 ,by the time he was thirty1 he had become a nineteenth century ,mohammed1 ready for a world crusade4 ,his war-cry was--,great is the ,reaper1 and ,mc,cormick is its prophet4 ,like ,mohammed1 he had his visions of future glory4 ,on one occasion1 while riding on horseback through a wilderness path1 the dazzling thought flashed upon his mind--,perhaps ,i may make a million dollars from this reaper4 ,this idea remained for years the driving wheel of his brain4 ,the thought was so enormous1 he said afterward1 that it seemed like a dream--like dwelling in the clouds--so remote1 so unattainable1 so exalted1 so visionary4 ,also1 like ,mohammed1 he had a period of preparatory solitude4 ,soon after the first exhibition of his reaper1 he bought a tract of land and farmed it alone1 with two aged ,negroes as housekeepers4 ,here he lived for more than a year with no companion except his reaper4 ,he seemed at this time1 too1 to have resolved upon a life of celibacy1 for ,i find in one of his letters an allusion to two young ladies of unusual attractiveness4 ,they are pretty1 smart and rich1 he writes1 but alas1 ,i have other business to attend to6 ,illustration3 ,,the ,,virginian ,,birthplace ,,of ,,the ,mc,c,o,r,m,i,c,k ,,reaper4 ,the two things of which he stood most in need were money and cheaper iron4 ,so1 after thinking over the situation in his lonely cabin1 he decided to build a furnace and make his own iron4 ,his father and a neighbour joined him in the enterprise4 ,they built the furnace1 made the iron1 and might have forgotten the reaper1 if the financial earthquake of #ahci had not shaken them down into the general wreckage4 ,the neighbour who had been made a partner signed over his property to his mother1 and threw the whole burden of the bankruptcy upon the ,mc,cormick family1 crushing them for a time into an abyss of debt and poverty4 ,cyrus ,mc,cormick gave up everything he owned to the creditors--everything except his reaper1 which nobody wanted4 ,so far his vision of wealth was still a dream4 ,instead of being the possessor of a million1 he was eight years older1 and penniless4 ,there were four sons and three daughters in the family1 and the nine of them slaved for five years to save the homestead from the auctioneer4 ,once the sheriff rode up with a writ1 but was so deeply impressed with their energy and uprightness that he rode away with the dreaded paper still in his pocket4 ,up to this time ,cyrus had not sold one reaper4 ,as ,mohammed preached for ten years without converting anyone except his own relatives1 so ,cyrus ,mc,cormick preached the gospel of the reaper for ten years without success4 ,then1 in #ahda1 he sold two for #ajj apiece4 ,the next year seven daring farmers came to the ,mc,cormick homestead1 each with #ajj in his hands4 ,this brilliant success brought the whole family into line behind ,cyrus1 and the farm was transformed into a reaper factory4 ,twenty-nine machines1 fearfully and wonderfully made1 were sold in #ahdc1 and fifty in #ahdd4 ,there were troubles1 of course4 ,some buyers failed to pay4 ,a workman who was sent out on horseback to collect #cjj1 ran away with horse1 money and all4 ,but none of these things moved ,cyrus4 ,at last1 after thirteen years of delay1 he was selling reapers4 ,best of all1 an order for eight had come from ,cincinnati4 ,these were the first reapers that were sold outside of ,virginia4 ,they were seen by the more enterprising farmers of ,ohio and created a sensation wherever they were used4 ,cyrus1 who was now a powerful1 broad-chested man of thirty-six1 caught a glimpse of his opportunity and sprang to seize it4 ,he saw that the time had come to leave the backwoods farm--forty miles from a blacksmith--sixty miles from a canal--one hundred miles from a railway4 ,so1 with #cjj in his belt1 he set out on horseback for the ,west4 ,here he saw the prairies4 ,to a man who had spent his life in a hollow of the ,alleghanies1 the ,west was a new world4 ,it was the natural home of the reaper4 ,the farmers of ,virginia might continue forever to harvest their small1 hilly fields by hand1 but here--in this vast land ocean1 with few labourers and an infinity of acres1 the reaper was as indispensable as the plough4 ,to reap even one of these new ,states by hand would require the whole working population of the country4 ,also1 in ,illinois1 ,mc,cormick saw what made his ,scotch heart turn cold within him--he saw hogs and cattle feeding in the autumn wheat-fields1 which could not be reaped for lack of labourers4 ,five million bushels of wheat had grown and ripened--enough to empty the horn of plenty into every farmer's home4 ,men and women1 children and grandmothers1 toiled day and night to gather in the yellow food4 ,but the short harvest-season rushed past so quickly that tons of it lay rotting under the hoofs of cattle4 ,it was a puzzling problem4 ,it was too much prosperity--a new trouble for farmers4 ,in ,europe1 men had been plenty and acres scarce4 ,here1 acres were plenty and men scarce4 ,ripe grain--the same in all countries1 will not wait4 ,unless it is gathered quickly--in from four to ten days1 it breaks down and decays4 ,so1 even to the dullest minds1 it was clear that there must be some better way of snatching in the ripened grain4 ,the sight of the trampled wheat goaded ,mc,cormick almost into a frenzy of activity4 ,he rode on horseback through ,illinois1 ,wisconsin1 ,missouri1 ,ohio1 and ,new ,york1 proclaiming his harvest gospel and looking for manufacturers who would build his reapers4 ,from shop to shop he went with the zeal of a ,savonarola4 ,illustration3 ,a ,,model ,,of ,,the ,,first ,,practical ,,reaper ,one morning1 in the little town of ,brockport1 ,new ,york1 he found the first practical men who appreciated his invention--,dayton ,s4 ,morgan and ,william ,h4 ,seymour4 ,morgan was a handy young machinist who had formed a partnership with ,seymour--a prosperous store-keeper4 ,they listened to ,mc,cormick with great interest and agreed to make a hundred reapers4 ,by this decision they both later became millionaires1 and also entered history as the founders of the first reaper factory in the world4 ,altogether1 in the two years after he left ,virginia1 ,mc,cormick sold #bdj reapers4 ,this was ,big ,business2 but it was only a morsel in proportion to his appetite4 ,neither was it satisfactory4 ,he found himself tangled in a snarl of trouble because of bad iron1 stupid workmen1 and unreliable manufacturers4 ,he cut the ,gordian knot by building a factory of his own at ,chicago4 ,this was one of the wisest decisions of his life1 though at the time it appeared to be a disastrous mistake4 ,chicago1 in #ahdg1 showed no signs of its present greatness4 ,as a city1 it was a ten-year-old experiment1 built in a swamp1 without a railway or a canal4 ,it was ugly and dirty1 with a river that ran in the wrong direction2 but it was busy4 ,it was the link between the ,mississippi and the ,great ,lakes--a central market where wheat was traded for lumber and furs for iron4 ,it had no history--no ancient families clogging up the streets with their special privileges4 ,and best of all1 it was a place where a big new idea was actually preferred to a small old one4 ,chicago did not look at ,mc,cormick with dead eyes and demand a certified cheque from his ancestors4 ,it sized him up in a few swift glances and saw a thick-set1 ruddy man1 with the physique of a heavy-weight wrestler1 dark hair that waved in glossy furrows1 and strong eyes that struck you like a blow4 ,it glanced at his reaper and saw a device to produce more wheat4 ,more wheat meant more business1 so ,chicago said ---- ,glad to see you4 ,you're the right man and you're in the right place4 ,come in and get busy4 ,william ,b4 ,ogden1 the first ,mayor of ,chicago1 listened to his story for two minutes1 then asked him how much he wanted for a half interest4 ,mc,cormick had little money and no prestige4 ,ogden had a surplus of both4 ,so a partnership was arranged1 and the new firm plunged toward prosperity by selling #ej1jjj worth of reapers for the next harvest4 ,at last there had come a break in the clouds1 and ,mc,cormick found his path flooded with sunshine4 ,he was no longer a wanderer in the night4 ,he was the ,reaper ,king--the founder of a new dynasty4 ,as soon as possible he bought out ,ogden1 and thenceforth established a one-man business4 ,by #ahea he was making a thousand reapers a year1 and owned one-tenth of the million dollars he had dreamed of in the ,virginian wilderness4 ,at this point his life changes4 ,his pioneer troubles are over4 ,there are no more thousand-mile rides on horseback--no more conflicts with jeering crowds--no more smashing of reapers by farm labourers4 ,the repeal of the ,corn ,laws in ,england had opened up a new market for our wheat1 and the discovery of gold in ,california was booming the reaper business by making money plentiful and labour scarce4 ,suddenly1 ,mc,cormick looked up from his work in the factory1 and saw that he was not only rich1 but famous4 ,one of his reapers had taken the ,grand ,prize at a ,world's ,fair in ,england4 ,even the ,london ,times1 which had first ridiculed his reaper as a cross between an ,astley chariot1 a wheelbarrow and a flying machine1 was obliged to admit1 several days later1 that the ,mc,cormick reaper is worth the whole cost of the ,exposition4 ,seventeen years later1 on the imperial farm1 near ,paris1 ,napoleon ,,iii4 descended from his carriage and fastened the ,cross of the ,legion of ,honour upon ,mc,cormick's coat4 ,there was a picture that some ,american-souled artist1 when we have one1 will delight to put on canvas4 ,how splendid was the contrast1 and how significant of the ,new ,age of ,democracy1 between the suave and feeble ,emperor1 enjoying the sunset rays of his inherited glory1 and the strong-faced1 rough-handed ,virginian farmer1 who had built up a new empire of commerce that will last as long as the human race eats bread6 ,from first to last1 the stout-hearted old ,reaper ,king received no favours from ,congress or the ,patent ,office4 ,he built up his stupendous business without a land grant or a protective tariff4 ,by the time that his ,chicago factory was ten years old1 he had sold #bc1jjj reapers1 and cleared a profit of nearly #a1cjj1jj4 ,the dream of his youth had been realised1 and more4 ,all told1 in #ahei1 there were #ej1jjj reapers in the ,united ,states1 doing the work of #cej1jjj men1 saving #d1jjj1jjj in wages1 and cramming the barns with #ej1jjj1jjj bushels of grain4 ,so1 on his fiftieth birthday1 the battle-scarred ,mc,cormick found himself a millionaire4 ,he was also married1 having fallen in love with ,miss ,nettie ,fowler1 of ,new ,york1 a young lady of unusual beauty and ability4 ,no history of the reaper can be complete without a reference to this remarkable woman1 who has been for fifty years1 and is to-day1 one of the active factors in our industrial development4 ,no important step has ever been taken either by her husband or her three sons1 until it has received her approval4 ,and ,mrs4 ,mc,cormick has been much more than a mere adviser4 ,her exact memory and keen grasp of the complex details of her husband's business made her practically an unofficial manager4 ,she suggested economies at the factory1 stopped the custom of closing the plant in midsummer1 studied the abilities of the workmen1 and on several occasions superintended the field-trials in ,europe4 ,chicago may not know it1 but it is true1 that its immense ,mc,cormick factory owes its existence to ,mrs4 ,mc,cormick4 ,after the ,big ,fire of #ahga1 when his #b1jjj1jjj plant was in ruins1 ,mc,cormick concluded to retire4 ,he still had a fortune of three or four millions and he was sixty-two years of age4 ,his managers advised him not to rebuild1 because of the excessive cost of new machinery4 ,as soon as the fiery cyclone had passed1 he and his wife drove to the wrecked factory4 ,several hundred of the workmen gathered about the carriage1 and the chief engineer1 acting as spokesman1 said3 ,well1 ,mr4 ,mc,cormick1 shall we start the small engine and make repairs1 or shall we start the big engine and make machines8 ,mr4 ,mc,cormick turned to his wife and said1 ,which shall it be8 ,it was a breathless moment for the workmen4 ,build again at once1 said ,mrs4 ,mc,cormick4 ,i do not want our boy to grow up in idleness2 ,i want him to work1 as a useful citizen1 and a true ,american4 ,start ,the ,big ,engine1 said ,mc,cormick4 ,the men threw their hats in the air and cheered4 ,they sprang at the smoking debris1 and began to rebuild before the cinders were cold4 ,such was the second birth of the vast factory which1 in its sixty years1 has created fully #e1jjj1jjj harvesters1 and which is now so magically automatic that1 with #f1jjj workmen1 it can make one-third of all the grain-gathering machinery of the world4 ,practically nothing has been written about ,mc,cormick from the human nature side4 ,he was one of those ,cromwellian men who can only be appreciated at a distance4 ,he was too absorbed in his work to be congenial and too aggressive to be popular4 ,he shouldered his way roughly against the slow-moving crowd2 and the people whom he thrust out of his way naturally did not consider the importance of his life-task4 ,most of the really great men of his day were his friends--,horace ,greeley1 for instance1 and ,peter ,cooper1 ,junius ,morgan1 ,abram ,s4 ,hewitt1 ,cyrus ,w4 ,field1 and ,ferdinand ,de ,lesseps4 ,but among the men of his own trade he stood hostile and alone4 ,mc,cormick wants to keep the whole reaper business to himself4 ,he will not live and let live1 said his competitors4 ,and they had reason to say so4 ,he did want to dominate4 ,he wanted to make all the harvesting machines that were made--not one less4 ,he was not at all a modern community-of-interest financier4 ,he was a man of an outgrown school--a consistent individualist1 not only in business1 but in politics and religion as well4 ,there was no compartment in his brain for mergers and combines--for theories of government ownership--for ,higher ,criticism and the new theology4 ,he was a ,benjamin ,franklin commercialist1 a ,thomas ,jefferson ,democrat1 and a ,john ,knox ,presbyterian4 ,he had worked harder to establish the reaper business than any other man4 ,he was making reapers when ,william ,deering was five years old1 and before ,ralph ,emerson and ,bill ,whiteley were born4 ,he had graduated into success through a fifteen-year course in failure4 ,the world into which he was born was as hostile to him as the ,kentucky wilderness was to ,daniel ,boone or the ,atlantic ,ocean to ,columbus4 ,he was hard-fibred1 because he had to be4 ,he was the thin end of the wedge that split into fragments the agricultural obstacle to social progress4 ,one careless writer of biographies has said that ,mc,cormick began at the foot of the ladder4 ,this is not correct4 ,when he began1 there was no ladder4 ,he had to build it as he climbed4 ,the first man who gave battle to ,mc,cormick was an erratic genius named ,obed ,hussey1 who1 as we have seen1 secured a reaper patent in #ahcc4 ,no two men were ever more unlike than ,hussey and ,mc,cormick4 ,hussey was born in ,nantucket2 and he had roamed the frozen ,north as a whaling seaman4 ,he was inventive1 poetic1 and as whimsical as the weather4 ,his delight was in working out some mechanical problem4 ,his first invention was a machine to make pins4 ,soon afterward1 while he was living in ,cincinnati1 constructing a machine to mould candles1 a friend said to him3 ,hussey1 why don't you invent a machine to reap grain8 ,are there no such machines8 he asked in surprise4 ,no1 said his friend1 and whoever can invent one will make a fortune4 ,hussey forsook his candle machine1 set to work upon a reaper1 and within a year had one in the fields4 ,then came a twenty-five-year war with ,mc,cormick1 which was waged furiously in the ,patent ,office1 the courts1 and a hundred wheat-fields4 ,hussey won the opening battle by arriving first at the ,patent ,office1 although his machine1 as claimed by ,mc,cormick1 was two years younger4 ,by #ahda ,hussey had sold reapers in five states1 and ten years later he shared the honours with ,mc,cormick at the ,london ,world's ,fair4 ,both machines were very crude and unsatisfactory4 ,hussey's had a better cutting apparatus and ,mc,cormicks was more complete4 ,in the long run1 each adopted the devices of the other1 and a better reaper was evolved4 ,before many years1 it became apparent that ,hussey was outclassed4 ,by #aheh he was left so far behind that he lost his interest in reapers and invented a steam-plough4 ,his first machine was really a mower1 says ,merritt ,finley ,miller1 one of the two professors who have written on harvesting machinery4 ,it lacked the master-wheel1 the reel and the divider1 without which the grain cannot be rightly handled4 ,when ,hussey gave up the contest1 his invention was bought for #bjj1jjj by ,william ,f4 ,ketchum and others1 who adapted it into a mowing-machine4 ,hussey was a very peculiar man1 said ,ralph ,emerson4 ,his machine was fairly good1 but it was a failure in the market1 because he would not put on a reel4 ,he refused to do this1 saying he did not invent a reel1 and it would be a falsehood if he put one on4 ,he said that it was contrary to his principles to sell anything that he had not invented4 ,on one occasion ,i went to buy a shop licence from him4 ',have you a thousand dollars in your pocket8' he asked4 ',no1' said ,i4 ',can you get me three thousand dollars by daylight to-morrow morning8' ',no1' ,i answered1 'but ,i can get it by noon4' ',well1' said ,hussey1 ',i want to be very reasonable with you4 ,if you'll pay me one thousand dollars before you leave the house1 or twenty-five hundred dollars before daybreak to-morrow1 ,i'll sell you a licence4 ,otherwise1 it will cost you twelve thousand dollars4' ,several days later ,i paid him twelve thousand dollars1 and as he handed me the licence1 he said--',now1 don't say that ,i never offered you this for a thousand dollars4' ,hussey's adventurous life was snapped short by a tragic death4 ,while he was on a train at ,baltimore1 a little girl was crying for a drink of water4 ,the kind-hearted old sailor-mechanic got off the train1 brought her a glass of water1 and on his way to return the glass1 he slipped and fell between the moving wheels4 ,of all the men who fought ,mc,cormick in the earlier days1 ,i found only two now alive--,ralph ,emerson1 of ,rockford1 and ,william ,n4 ,whiteley1 of ,springfield1 ,ohio4 ,both of these men to-day generously give the old warrior his due4 ,mc,cormick was the first man to make the reaper a success in the field1 said ,whiteley1 the battle-worn giant of ,ohio1 where ,i found him still at work4 ,mc,cormick was a fighter--a bulldog1 we called him2 but those were rough days4 ,the man who couldn't fight was wiped out4 ,ralph ,emerson1 now one of the most venerable figures in ,illinois1 rose from a sick-bed against his doctors orders1 so that he might be magnanimous to his former antagonist4 ,mc,cormick's first reapers were a failure1 said he1 speaking slowly and with great difficulty2 and he owed his preminence mainly to his great business ability4 ,his enemies have said that he was not an inventor1 but ,i say that he was an inventor of eminence4 ,so1 as the gray haze of years enables us to trace the larger outlines of his work1 we can see that ,mc,cormick was especially fitted for a task which1 up to his day1 had never been done1 and which will never need to be repeated during the lifetime of our earth4 ,he was absolutely mastered by one idea1 as wholly as ,copernicus or ,columbus4 ,his business was his life4 ,it was not accidental1 as with ,rockefeller1 nor incidental1 as with ,carnegie4 ,on one occasion when a friend was joking him about his poor judgment in outside affairs1 he whirled around in his chair and said emphatically3 ,i have one purpose in life1 and only one--the success and widespread use of my machines4 ,all other matters are to me too insignificant to be considered4 ,he made money--ten millions or more4 ,but a hundred millions would not have bribed him to forsake his reaper4 ,it was as much a part of him as his right hand4 ,in several of his business letters he writes as though he had been a ,hebrew prophet1 charged with a world-message of salvation4 ,but for the fact that ,providence has seemed to assist me in all our business1 he writes on one critical occasion1 it has at times seemed that ,i would almost sink under the weight of responsibility hanging upon me4 ,i believe the ,lord will help us out4 ,not that he left any detail to ,providence to which he could personally attend4 ,he was a ,puritan of the trust-in-,god-and-keep-your-powder-dry species4 ,a little farther down1 in this same letter1 he writes--,meet ,hussey in ,maryland and put him down4 ,the fountain-springs of his life were wholly within4 ,he acted from a few basic1 unchangeable convictions4 ,if public opinion was with him1 he was gratified2 if it was against him he thought no more of it than of the rustling of the trees when the wind blew4 ,when anyone opposed his plans and showed that they were impossible1 said one of his superintendents1 ,i noticed that he never argued2 he just went on working4 ,his brain had certain subjects distinctly mapped out4 ,what he knew--he knew4 ,he had no hazy imaginings4 ,he lived in a black and white world and abhorred all half-tints4 ,he was right--always right1 and the men who opposed him were ,philistines and false prophets1 who deserved to be consumed by sudden fire from ,heaven4 ,it was this inward spiritual force that made him irresistible4 ,small men shrivelled up when he spoke to them4 ,the exhibition of his powerful will was at times actually terrible1 said one of his attorneys4 ,if any other man on this earth ever had such a will1 certainly ,i have not heard of it4 ,small and easy undertakings had no interest for him whatever4 ,it was the impossibility that enraged and inspired him4 ,at the sight of an obstacle in his path1 he rushed forward like a charge of cavalry4 ,when the ,civil ,war was at its height1 he and ,horace ,greeley1 who was very similar to him in this respect1 actually believed that they could stop it4 ,they had several long conferences in the ,fifth ,avenue ,hotel1 ,new ,york1 and ,mc,cormick went so far in #ahfd as to prepare a statement of principles which he fully believed would restore peace and harmony between the ,north and the ,south4 ,such was this massive1 unbendable ,american4 ,as we shall see1 he was far from being the only strong1 picturesque figure in the industry4 ,but it would make many a book to tell in detail the effect of his life work upon the progress of the ,united ,states4 ,it was a ,new ,world1 truly1 that had been created1 alike for the people of the farms and of the cities1 in the year that the victorious old ,reaper ,king was carried to his grave1 with a sheaf of wheat on his breast4 ,what if there had been no reapers1 and no hunger-insurance1 and no cheap bread6 ,what sort of an ,american nation would we have1 if we were still using such food-implements as the sickle and the flail8 ,could we have swung through four years of ,civil ,war1 as we did1 without famine or national insolvency8 ,could the ,west have risen toward its present greatness if its billion acres had to be harvested by hand8 ,could the railways alone1 which produce nothing1 have given us more food for less work--the first necessity of a civilised democracy8 ,would our manufacturers be creating new wealth at the rate of sixteen billions a year1 if the reaper had not enriched the farmers and sent half the farm-hands into the factories8 ,and our towering cities--two of them more populous than the thirteen colonies were1 how large would they be and how prosperous if bread were twenty cents a pound8 ,as ,seward once said1 it was the reaper that pushed the ,american frontier westward at the rate of thirty miles a year4 ,most of the western railways were built to the wheat2 and it was wheat money that paid for them4 ,the reaper clicked ahead of the railroad1 and civilisation followed the wheat1 from ,chicago to ,puget ,sound1 just as the self-binder is leading the railroad to-day--three hundred miles in front in ,western ,canada1 and eight hundred miles in ,siberia4 ,even so unyielding a partisan of the railroads as ,marvin ,hughitt admitted to me that the reaper has not yet received proper recognition for its development of the ,west4 ,during the ,civil ,war the reaper was doing the work of a million men in the grain-fields of the ,north4 ,it enabled a widow1 with five sons1 to send them all to the front1 and yet gather every sheaf into the barn4 ,it kept the wolf from the door1 and more--it paid our ,european debts in wheat4 ,it wiped out all necessity for ,negro labour in the wheat ,states1 just as a cotton-picker will1 some day1 in the ,south4 ,the reaper is to the ,north what the slave is to the ,south1 said ,edwin ,m4 ,stanton in #ahfa4 ,it releases our young men to do battle for the ,union1 and at the same time keeps up the supply of the nation's bread4 ,lincoln called out every third man1 yet the crops increased4 ,europeans could not believe it4 ,they heard in #ahfa that we were sending three times as much wheat to ,england as we had ever done before4 ,they shook their heads and said--,another ,american story6 when they were told that we were supporting two vast armies and yet selling other nations enough grain to feed thirty-five million people4 ,naturally1 no country that clung to the sickle and flail could be convinced of such a preposterous miracle4 ,after the war1 the mighty river of wheat that flowed from the ,west became so wide and so deep that it poured a yellow stream into every ,american home4 ,it began to turn the wheels of fourteen thousand flour-mills4 ,rich cities sprang up1 like ,aladdin palaces1 beside its banks--,chicago1 ,st4 ,louis1 ,cincinnati1 ,milwaukee1 ,minneapolis1 ,kansas ,city1 ,st4 ,paul1 ,omaha1 ,des ,moines4 ,all of these1 and a hundred lesser ones1 were nourished into prosperity by the rising current of reaper-wheat1 as it moved from the ,mississippi to the sea4 ,by #ahgf we had become the champion food-producers of the world4 ,a ,kansas farmer was raising six bushels of wheat with as little labour as an ,italian spent to produce one4 ,and there was one doughty ,scot--,dalrymple of ,dakota1 who was guillotining more wheat with four hundred labourers and three hundred harvesters1 than five thousand peasants could garner by hand4 ,inevitably1 the ,american ,farmer became a financier4 ,in #ahgf he earned twenty-four per cent4 ,he had twenty-seven hundred millions to spend4 ,by #ahhj he had begun to buy so much store goods that the ,united ,states was able to write a ,declaration of ,industrial ,independence4 ,steadily he has grown richer and wiser1 until now he is the owner of a billion-acre farm1 worth thirty dollars an acre1 operated with farm machinery that cost him #ijj1jjj1jjj and producing1 in a single year1 seven thousand times the value of a millionaire4 ,such1 in one country1 is the amazing result which the ,reaper has helped to create4 ,and this is not all4 ,it is now more necessary to the human race than the railway4 ,it is fighting back famine in fifty countries4 ,its click has become the music of an ,international ,anthem4 ,the nations are feeding each other1 in spite of their tariffs and armies4 ,the whole world takes dinner at the one long table2 and the fear of hunger is dying out of the hearts of men2 and the prayer of the ,christian centuries is answered--,give us this day our daily bread4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,deering ,fifty years ago two young farmers named ,marsh were cutting grain near ,de,kalb1 ,illinois4 ,they were too intelligent--too ,american--to be fond of work for work's sake4 ,and of all their drudgery1 the everlasting stooping over bundles to bind them into sheaves galled them most4 ,such back-breaking toil1 they thought1 might be well enough for kangaroos1 but it certainly was not suitable for an erect biped1 like man4 ,if ,i didn't have to walk from bundle to bundle1 and hump myself like a horseshoe1 ,i could do twice as much work1 said one of the brothers4 ,well1 said the other1 why can't we fix a platform on the reaper1 and have the grain carried up to us8 ,it was a brilliant idea and a new one4 ,neither of the young fellows had ever seen a reaper factory2 but they were handy and self-reliant4 ,by the next autumn they were in the field with their new machine1 and as they had expected1 they bound the grain twice as quickly as they had the year before4 ,so was born the famous ,marsh harvester1 which proved to be the half-way mark in the evolution of the grain-reaping machine4 ,it was the child of the reaper and the parent of the self-binder4 ,it cut in two the cost of binding grain4 ,but it did more than this--it gave the farmer his first chance to stand erect1 and forced him to be quick1 for the two men who stood on the harvester were compelled to bind the grain as fast as it was cut4 ,thus it introduced the factory system1 one might say1 into the harvest-field4 ,for the first time the ,big ,minute made its appearance on the farm4 ,the ,marsh boys1 never dreaming that they had helped to change the destinies of nations1 took out a flimsy patent on their invention1 and went on with their farm work4 ,two summers later1 as they were at work with it1 their home-made harvester broke down4 ,a farmer from ,plano1 near ,de,kalb1 named ,lewis ,steward1 was riding by4 ,he stopped1 and1 being a man of unusual abilities and discernment1 he at once saw the value of the ,marsh machine1 even in its disabled state4 ,boys1 you're on the right track1 he said4 ,if you can run your machine ten rods1 it can be made to run ten miles4 ,it is superior to anything now in use4 ,thus cheered1 the ,marsh brothers went to ,plano1 arranged a partnership with a clever mechanic named ,john ,f4 ,hollister1 and began to make harvesters for sale4 ,to their surprise the new machine was not welcomed4 ,it was received with an almost unanimous roar of disapproval4 ,it was a man-killer1 said the farmers4 ,now1 the ,marsh brothers were quick1 nervous men1 and they had built a machine to suit themselves4 ,but it was undeniably too fast and nerve-racking for most farmers4 ,the labourers refused to work with it4 ,the ,marshes overcame the obstacle in a very ingenious way4 ,they put girls on their harvesters1 instead of men4 ,not ordinary girls1 to be sure1 but vigorous ,german maidens1 who were swift and skilful binders4 ,also1 they had well-trained men1 disguised as hoboes1 who mingled in the crowd around the harvester at times of demonstration1 and volunteered to get aboard of it4 ,to see a girl or a ,weary ,willie binding grain on the new machine shamed the labourers into a surrender1 and in #ahfd two dozen of the ,marsh harvesters were sold4 ,illustration3 ,,william ,,deering ,in this year one of the ,marshes performed a feat that seemed more appropriate for a circus than for a grain-field4 ,riding alone on a harvester1 he bound a whole acre of wheat in fifty-five minutes4 ,little was heard of this amazing achievement at the time1 as the national mind was distraught over the death grapple of ,grant and ,lee in ,virginia4 ,but there was one quick-eyed man in ,chicago named ,gammon who heard of the event1 and acted upon it so promptly that the goddess of prosperity picked him out as one of her favourites4 ,several years before1 ,gammon had been a ,methodist preacher in ,maine4 ,a weak throat had brought his sermons to an end1 and he became a reaper salesman in ,chicago4 ,he was shrewd and honest1 and in #ahfd his profits were very nearly forty thousand dollars4 ,when he heard that ,w4 ,w4 ,marsh had bound an acre of grain in fifty-five minutes1 on a new-fangled reaper1 he caught the next train for ,de,kalb1 and bought a licence to manufacture ,marsh harvesters4 ,he took in a partner--,j4 ,d4 ,easter--and the business inched ahead slowly1 until in #ahgj the sales rose to a thousand4 ,easter and ,gammon were driving their small factory ahead at full speed4 ,if they only could secure enough capital1 they would surprise the world4 ,one evening1 while ,gammon was worrying over this lack1 he heard a gentle knock at the door4 ,he opened it to one of his old acquaintances from ,maine4 ,mr4 ,gammon1 said the visitor1 ,i have about forty thousand dollars of spare money that ,i would like to invest in ,chicago real estate1 and ,i want your advice as to the best place to buy4 ,what6 said ,gammon1 springing to his feet in delight4 ,have you money to invest8 ,give it to me and ,i'll pay you ten per cent4 or make you a partner in the best business in ,illinois4 ,the visitor1 whose name was ,william ,deering1 knew nothing whatever about reapers nor wheat-fields4 ,he had gained a fair-sized fortune in the wholesale dry-goods business4 ,but he was a ,methodist and had confidence in the ex-reverend ,e4 ,h4 ,gammon2 so he passed his #dj1jjj across the table and the next day went home to ,maine4 ,illustration3 ,,william ,n4 ,,whiteley ,photo by ,baumgardner1 ,springfield1 ,o4 ,c4 ,w4 ,,marsh ,,john ,f4 ,,appleby ,photo by ,rice1 ,milwaukee ,e4 ,h4 ,,gammon ,two years later ,deering came down to see how ,gammon and the #dj1jjj were faring4 ,the books showed a profit of #hj1jjj4 ,so ,deering requested that he be made a partner4 ,a year afterward ,gammon fell sick and begged ,deering to come to ,illinois and manage the business4 ,deering consented to be manager for one year only2 but ,gammon's sickness continued4 ,so1 said ,william ,deering1 who told me this story1 in that way ,i got into the harvester business and had to stay in4 ,but ,i did not even know1 at that time1 the appearance of our own machine4 ,deering's competitors at first called him a greenhorn4 ,but they forgot that he was the only one among them who had been trained in the art of business4 ,he was already a veteran--a prize winner--in the game of finance4 ,for thirty years1 ever since he began to earn #ah a month in his father's woolen mills1 he had been a man of affairs4 ,he had1 in fact1 established the wholesale dry-goods house of ,deering1 ,milliken ,co41 which still stands as one of the largest of its kind4 ,this training was all the more valuable an asset because of the conditions that prevailed when ,deering entered the harvester trade4 ,for he arrived in that worst of all years in the last century--#ahgc4 ,the ,jay ,cooke panic was at its height4 ,the proudest corporations were falling like grass before a mower4 ,it was a year of dread and paralysis4 ,but ,deering faced these disadvantages with ability1 with sheer1 dogged persistence1 and with business training4 ,in seven years he had become one of the greatest of the harvester kings1 and was leading them all up to a higher level4 ,we shall understand more clearly what this means if we consider the state of the trade at the time of his entrance4 ,a man of peaceable and kindly inclinations1 ,deering was dragged into a business that was as turbulent as a bull-fight4 ,for as the reaper had evolved1 it had become a bone of contention1 and it remained so from the first patent to the last4 ,the opening battle was fought by ,mc,cormick and ,hussey1 each claiming to have been the ,christopher ,columbus of the business4 ,after the gold-rush of #ahdi new types of reapers sprang up on all sides4 ,the crude machines that merely cut the grain were driven out by others that automatically raked the cut grain into bundles4 ,these were soon followed by a combined reaper and mower1 which held the field until the ,marsh harvester was invented1 as we have seen1 at the close of the ,civil ,war4 ,among these different types of reapers1 and the numerous variations of each type1 the bitterest rivalries prevailed4 ,there was no pool1 no gentlemen's agreement1 no community of interest4 ,indeed1 the harvester business was not business4 ,it was a riotous game of ,farmer1 farmer1 who gets the farmer8 ,the excited players cared less for the profits than for the victories4 ,as fast as they made money1 they threw it back into the game4 ,mechanics became millionaires1 and millionaires became mechanics4 ,the whole trade was tense with risk and rivalry and excitement1 as though it were a search for gold along the high plateaus of the ,rand4 ,and this in spite of the fact that1 with the exception of ,mc,cormick1 ,osborne1 and ,whiteley1 the men who came to be known as reaper kings were not naturally fighters4 ,no business men were ever gentler than ,deering1 ,glessner1 ,warder1 ,adriance1 and ,huntley4 ,but the making of reapers was a new trade4 ,it was like a vast1 unfenced prairie1 where every settler owned as much ground as he could defend4 ,each step ahead meant a struggle for patents4 ,whoever built a reaper had to defend himself in the courts as well as approve himself in the harvest-fields4 ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick1 especially1 as ,william ,deering soon learned1 wielded the ,big ,stick against every man who dared to make reapers4 ,he was the old veteran of the trade1 and he gave battle to his competitors as though they were a horde of trespassers4 ,he was their common enemy1 and the reaper money that was squandered on lawsuits brought a golden era of prosperity to the lawyers4 ,some of these patent wars shook the country with the crash of hostile forces4 ,the tide of battle rolled up to the ,supreme ,court and even into the halls of ,congress4 ,once1 in #ahee when ,mc,cormick charged full tilt upon ,john ,h4 ,manny1 who was making reapers at ,rockford1 ,illinois1 a three-year struggle began that was the most noted legal duel of the day4 ,mc,cormick1 to make sure of his victory1 went into the fight with a battery of lawyers whom he thought invincible--,william ,h4 ,seward1 ,e4 ,m4 ,dickerson1 and ,senator ,reverdy ,johnson4 ,manny made a giant effort at self-defence by hiring ,abraham ,lincoln1 ,edwin ,m4 ,stanton1 ,stephen ,a4 ,douglas1 ,peter ,h4 ,watson1 ,george ,harding1 and ,congressman ,h4 ,winter ,davis4 ,from first to last it was a lawyers' battle1 and ,mc,cormick was finally defeated by ,stanton1 who made an unanswerably eloquent speech4 ,for this speech ,stanton received #aj1jjj1 and ,lincoln1 who had made no speech at all1 was given #a1jjj4 ,yet1 in the long run1 the man who profited by this lawsuit was ,lincoln2 for it was this money that enabled him to carry on his famous debate with ,douglas1 and thus made him the inevitable candidate of the ,republican ,party4 ,mc,cormick's most disastrous lawsuit was with ,d4 ,m4 ,osborne and the ,gordon brothers1 of ,rochester4 ,in #ahge the ,gordons had invented an attachment for a wire self-binder1 and in a careless moment ,mc,cormick had signed a contract promising to make these self-binders and to pay #aj royalty on every machine4 ,then a man named ,withington appeared with a much better self-binder4 ,mc,cormick at once began to make the ,withington machine and was sued by the ,gordons4 ,at this time ,mc,cormick was over seventy years of age1 and crippled with rheumatism2 but he believed that the ,gordons had deceived him and he fought them sternly as long as he lived4 ,after his death1 his eldest son1 ,cyrus1 consented to a compromise1 whereby ,osborne1 who was owner of a share in the ,gordon concern1 and the ,gordons were to be paid #bbe1jjj4 ,but in order to impress upon them the enormity of this amount1 he prepared the money for them in small bills4 ,when they called at the ,mc,cormick office in ,chicago1 they were taken to a small room on the top floor and shown a great pyramid of green currency4 ,there is your money1 said ,mc,cormick's lawyer4 ,kindly count it and see if it is not a quarter of a million dollars4 ,the three men gasped with mingled ecstasy and consternation4 ,b--b--but1 stammered one of them1 how can we take it away8 ,can't you give us a cheque8 ,that is the right amount1 in legal money1 gentlemen1 replied the lawyer4 ,all ,i will say is that there are a couple of old valises in the closet--and ,i wish you good afternoon4 ,for several hours ,osborne and the ,gordons literally waded in affluence1 counting the money and packing it in the valises4 ,by the time they had finished1 it was eight o'clock4 ,the building was dark4 ,the elevator was not running4 ,they were hungry and terrified4 ,step by step they groped their trembling way downstairs1 and staggered with their treasure through the perilous streets to the ,grand ,pacific ,hotel4 ,none of them ever forgot the terror of that night4 ,another warlike ,reaper ,king was ,bill ,whiteley1 of ,ohio4 ,whiteley had invented a combined mower and reaper in #aheh1 which he named the ,champion2 and he pushed this machine with an irresistible enthusiasm4 ,his mode of attack was not the patent suit1 but the field test4 ,this was the white-hot climax of the rivalry among the reaper kings2 and it was great sport for the farmers4 ,it was a reaper circus--a fierce chariot-race in a wheat-field2 and its influence upon the industry was remarkable4 ,it weeded out the low-grade machines4 ,it spurred on the manufacturers to a campaign of improvement4 ,it developed ,american harvesters to the highest point of perfection4 ,it swung the farmers into the new path of scientific agriculture4 ,and it piled expenses so high that few of the reaper kings escaped disaster4 ,a field test was conducted in this fashion3 ,a committee of judges was appointed1 and several acres of ripe grain were selected as the battle-field4 ,after the field was marked off into equal sections1 each reaper took its place4 ,there were sometimes two reapers and sometimes forty4 ,the signal was given4 ,crack--the horses leaped2 the drivers shouted2 and hundreds of farmers surged up and down in excited crowds4 ,illustration3 ,,asa ,s4 ,,bushnell ,,benjamin ,h4 ,,warder ,,hon4 ,,thomas ,,mott ,,osborne ,,david ,m4 ,,osborne ,all's fair in a field test1 said the reaper agents who superintended these contests2 though each man said it to himself4 ,they were a hardy and reckless body of men1 half cowboy1 half mechanic1 and no trick was too dangerous or too desperate for them4 ,often the feud was so bitter that bodyguards of big-fisted bulldozers were on the spot to protect the warrior of their tribe who was in danger4 ,i had four men with me once who together weighed #a1jjj pounds1 said ,a4 ,e4 ,mayer1 who is now the general of an army of #dj1jjj salesmen4 ,in most tests the machines were shamefully abused4 ,self-binders were made to cut and bind stubble as though it were grain4 ,mowers were driven full tilt against stumps and hop-poles4 ,rival reapers were chained back to back and yanked apart by plunging horses4 ,the warrior agents exposed the weak points in each other's machines4 ,they photographed each other's breakdowns1 and bragged to the limit of their vocabularies4 ,they raised prices in one town and cut them in the next2 for when their fighting blood was aroused--and that was often--they cared no more for profits than a small boy cares for his clothes4 ,to give only one instance out of hundreds1 here is a picture of a field test that ,i found in the diary of ,b4 ,b4 ,clarke1 of ,madison1 who is now the editor of the ,american ,thresherman1 but who was in the eighties a harvester fighter in ,indiana4 ,we drove fourteen miles to the wheat-field1 which was also the battle-field1 he wrote1 and found a heavy crop of rank grain1 wild pea vines1 morning glories and other vegetation1 which tested both machines to the limit4 ,the bundles were twisted together by the vines into almost a continuous rope4 ,after adjusting the machine1 we had to 'open the field4' ,this is considered the most severe test1 as the machine1 the horses and all are in the grain4 ,a---- drove the team1 a magnificent pair of big grays4 ,mc,k---- watched the binder1 while ,y---- and ,i created sympathy for our cause among the farmers who had come to see the fight4 ,with a crack of his whip and a shout to his team1 ,a---- opened the ball4 ,the machine was so crowded with grain and weeds that the sickle could not be heard fifty feet away4 ,he cleared the first round without a stop4 ,then the other machine followed1 but the driver1 failing to recognise the necessity of fast driving1 allowed his machine to clog1 and lost the day4 ,we received two hundred dollars in gold on the spot for our victorious binder4 ,illustration3 ,a ,,self-,,binder ,,in ,,scotland1 ,,with ,,the ,,wallace ,,monument ,,in ,,the ,,background ,on returning to ,fort ,wayne we found the ,e---- people1 whose headquarters were separated by a partition wall from ours1 had coaxed one of our customers to cancel his order1 and substitute their machine4 ,for this act1 we retaliated and replaced three of their orders the following week1 and while loading these into the farmers' wagons a fight took place between the opposing factions4 ,i looked as though ,i had encountered a flax-hackle4 ,the next day hostilities opened early with three on our side to six of the ,e---- host1 requiring a riot alarm and a wagon-load of police to restore order4 ,we had swept the enemy before us1 using neck-yokes1 pitman rods and even six shooters in the grand finale4 ,our expense account for that week included fifty dollars for lawyers' fees1 which was promptly ,o4 ,k4'd by the manager4 ,after all1 ,i had only obeyed instructions1 which were to get the business and hold up prices1 'peaceably if you can1 but forcibly if you must4' ,an interesting relic of these fierce days of cut-throat competition was given to me by ,mr4 ,john ,f4 ,steward4 ,it reads as follows3-- ,,to ,,agents ,,for ,,the ,,sale ,,of ,,harvesting ,,machinery3 ,the undersigned1 manufacturers of harvesting machinery1 call the attention of their travelling experts and local agents to a practice which has grown among them for a few years past1 and which has become so disreputable and is carried to such an extent that we feel it necessary to bring it to your special notice4 ,it is the habit of trying to break up sales made by other agents when you have not been successful in securing the sale4 ,it has become a very common practice1 as soon as a sale is made by one agent1 for the agents of all other machines to try to break up that sale1 by misrepresentations or by lowering the price1 or by trying to convince the purchaser that the machine which he has bargained for is not as good as the one which the other agent sells4 ,this practice is disreputable1 and should not be tolerated by any manufacturer4 ,we wish it now thoroughly understood that we will not tolerate this practice in any agent1 and we will be glad to have reports from you of the agents of any machines who have tried to break up your sales of our machines in this way4 ,there is nothing that tends more to demoralise business than this practice1 and we wish it stopped4 ,machines should be sold upon their merits1 and not by disparaging or running down other machines4 ,you will find that your customers will place more reliance upon what you say if you leave all other machines alone1 and show the good features of your own and demonstrate them in actual work4 ,an agent never makes any progress by running down or trying to show the defects of others1 and you will be better able to sustain your prices and the reputation of your machines by following the course indicated above4 ,therefore1 it is our wish that you should hold to your prices firmly1 present your machines in the very best possible light1 and use all honourable means for making a fair and honest sale2 but if you are unfortunate enough to lose your sale1 and some competitor gains it1 don't be persuaded to put yours in the field by the side of your competitor1 or try in any way to break up the sale2 and do not1 until the purchaser has discarded another machine1 offer to put one of ours in its place4 ,of course we do not mean by this that you shall stand quietly by and see other agents break up your sales1 or if others habitually do this that you shall not retaliate1 but you must not be the first to inaugurate this practice4 ,we are always ready to meet fair and honest competition4 ,we want our business conducted in a fair and honourable way1 and not descend to ways that are discreditable to us and to you4 ,no one agent can expect to sell all the machines that are wanted in his district1 for the poorest machine will have some friends1 and1 though he may have the very best one1 we do not expect he will make every one see it4 ,let the purchaser take the risk4 ,if he buys an inferior machine he should take the consequences1 as if he was deceived or mistaken in his judgment in buying a horse4 ,in such a case you would not think of putting your horse in work the purchaser was doing1 to show him yours was the best1 with the expectation that he would return the one he had bought because it did not prove quite equal to yours in drawing a load or in driving4 ,if you would not in the case of a horse1 why should you1 in the case of a mower1 reaper1 or self-binding harvester8 ,our advice to you is3 #ast4 ,hold firmly to your prices4 #b;d4 ,sell your own machine4 ,convince your purchaser that you have the best machine made4 #c;d4 ,settle for the machine at time of delivery4 ,a machine works much better after being settled for4 #dth4 ,if you lose the sale do not try to break up the sale of your competitor4 ,it won't pay4 ,illustration3 ,signatures ,the king of the field test was ,william ,n4 ,whiteley4 ,no other reaper king1 in any country1 received as much renown from his personal exploits4 ,he was the ,charlemagne of the harvest-field4 ,he was as tall as a sapling and as strong as a tree4 ,as a professor in the great field school of agriculture1 he has never been surpassed4 ,he could out-talk1 outwork1 and generally outwit the men who were sent against him4 ,he was a whole exhibition in himself4 ,i've seen ,bill ,whiteley racin' his horses through the grain and leanin' over with his long arms to pick the mice's nests from just in front of the knife1 said an old ,ohio settler4 ,the feat that first made ,whiteley famous was performed at ,jamestown1 ,ohio1 in #ahfg4 ,his competitor was doing as good work as he was2 whereupon he sprang from his seat1 unhitched one horse1 and finished his course with a single1 surprised steed pulling the heavy machine4 ,his competitor followed suit1 and succeeded fully as well4 ,this enraged ,whiteley1 who at that time was as powerful as a young ,hercules4 ,i can pull my reaper myself1 he shouted1 turning his second horse loose1 and yoking his big shoulders into its harness4 ,such a thing had never been done before1 and has never been done since2 but it is true that1 in the passion of the moment1 ,whiteley was filled with such strength that he ran the reaper from one side of the field to the other1 cutting a full swath--a deed that1 had he done it in ancient ,greece1 would have placed him among the immortals4 ,it was witnessed by five hundred farmers1 and fully reported in the press4 ,one of the reporters1 as it happened1 representing the ,cincinnati ,commercial1 was a young ,ohioan named ,whitelaw ,reid1 now the ,american ,ambassador to the ,court of ,st4 ,james4 ,that ten minutes in a horse collar made #b1jjj1jjj for ,whiteley4 ,his antagonist1 ,benjamin ,h4 ,warder1 was filled with admiration for ,whiteley's prowess1 and at once proposed that they should quit fighting and work in harmony4 ,give me the right to make your reaper and ,i'll pay you #e apiece for all ,i can sell1 said ,warder4 ,it's a bargain1 responded ,whiteley4 ,and so there arose the first consolidation in the harvester business4 ,whiteley and ,warder did not merge their companies2 but they divided the ,united ,states into three parts--one for ,whiteley1 one for his brother ,amos1 who also made reapers in ,springfield1 and one for ,warder4 ,they united in building a malleable iron foundry and a knife works1 so that they could use better materials at a lower cost4 ,they made the first handsome and shapely machines4 ,for twelve years this triple alliance led the way1 and all others1 even the mighty ,mc,cormick and the sagacious ,deering1 had to follow4 ,the ,champion reaper became the leading machine of the ,united ,states1 and the little town of ,springfield1 ,ohio1 was known as the ,reaper ,city4 ,as many as #afj1jjj reapers and mowers were sent out as a year's work4 ,in all1 #b1jjj1jjj of ,whiteley's ,champion machines have been made in ,springfield1 and have sold at a gain of #ah1jjj1jjj4 ,as the millions came pouring in so fast1 ,whiteley's head was turned and he began to run amuck4 ,he cut loose from ,warder and from his own partners1 ,fassler and ,kelly1 opened war on the ,knights of ,labour1 built the biggest reaper factory in the world1 became a railroad president1 helped to corner the ,chicago wheat market1 backed the ,strasburg ,clock--an absurd self-binder that was as big as a pipe-organ--and came crashing down in a failure that jarred the farming world from end to end4 ,whiteley lost millions in this crash--and with comparative indifference4 ,it was never the profits that he fought for4 ,at heart he was a sportsman rather than a money-maker4 ,he craved the excitement of the race itself more than the prizes4 ,to win--that was the ambition of his life4 ,and he did not shrink from spectacular methods to accomplish his ambition4 ,for instance1 nothing less would satisfy him1 when he exhibited at the ,philadelphia ,centennial1 than a quarter-sized reaper1 made daintily of rosewood and gold4 ,this brought him so sudden a rush of orders from the ,east that in one day of the following year he sent seventy loaded cars to ,baltimore4 ,with flags flying and brass bands playing1 these cars rolled off1 with orders to travel only by daylight4 ,when they arrived in ,harrisburg1 running in three sections1 they caught the eye of a railroad superintendent named ,mc,crea--who is now1 by the way1 president of the ,pennsylvania ,railroad4 ,mc,crea saw a chance to advertise his railway as well as ,whiteley's reapers1 so he linked the seventy cars together into one three-quarter-mile train1 put his biggest engine at the front1 and sent the gaudy caravan on its way4 ,whiteley never knew how to be commonplace1 even in the smallest matters4 ,wherever he went1 his trail was marked by stories of his exploits and his oddities4 ,how he organised the famous ,white ,plug ,hat ,brigade in the ,blaine campaign--how he made a twelve-hour speech to help ,mother ,stewart close up the saloons of ,springfield--how he found a ,springfield farmer using a ,mc,cormick reaper1 gave him a ,whiteley reaper in its place1 and flung the rival machine upon the junk-pile1 as a sign that he was the monarch of ,ohio--how he gathered up a peck of pies after a field test dinner1 put them in a sack1 and ate nothing but pies for half a week--such is the sort of anecdotes that his life has added to the folklore of the ,western farmers4 ,many a time his vaudeville tactics disgusted and enraged his fellow manufacturers2 but he was too big a factor to be ignored4 ,once1 when a number of reaper kings had met together to see if they could rescue their business from its riot of rivalry1 the chairman opened the discussion with the question--,what ought we to do to improve the conditions of our trade8 ,for a moment there was silence1 and then ,john ,p4 ,adriance--as mild-natured a man as ever lived--said blandly1 ,kill ,whiteley4 ,with daring originality ,whiteley combined a tremendous physical vitality and a brain that fairly effervesced with inventiveness4 ,he probably holds the record among the reaper-men for inventions1 with #abe patents in his name4 ,and he would work twenty-four hours at a stretch1 without a yawn4 ,one evening he asked a young machinist to remain in the factory and help him fix a refractory reaper4 ,after working till midnight ,whiteley said3 ,well1 ,jim1 ,i suppose you think you are tired4 ,go home and have a good night's sleep1 and come back here in three hours4 ,he dashed with fanatical energy into any undertaking that appealed to his imagination4 ,once1 when he had too much money1 he bought control of a new railway that ran through ,ohio from ,springfield to ,jackson1--#afj miles4 ,he wanted to know its real value1 so1 instead of asking the directors a few questions1 as other men would have done1 ,whiteley travelled over the entire length of the railroad1 on foot4 ,when ,i saw ,whiteley1 last ,june1 he was time-worn and whitened4 ,since the great failure1 he has been in the harvester business only intermittently4 ,he has long outlived his ,golden ,age1 but he is as busy as ever1 with a new scheme and a new factory4 ,and he still wears the ,scotch cap and long boots that have been familiar at field tests for more than half a century4 ,of the other ,springfield men1 ,warder was unquestionably the ablest4 ,he was the main wheel1 said ,whiteley4 ,as a young man of twenty-seven he was running a sawmill in ,springfield when he first heard of the reaper4 ,he was so impressed with its possibilities that he offered the inventor #cj1jjj for a share in it4 ,young ,warder is crazy1 said ,springfield people1 for at that time #cj1jjj was a fortune and a reaper was a fad4 ,but thirty-five years later1 when ,warder had removed to ,washington and become noted among its social entertainers1 his investment had multiplied itself very nearly two hundredfold4 ,warder had associated with him two partners1 ,asa ,s4 ,bushnell and ,j4 ,j4 ,glessner4 ,bushnell began earning his living in boyhood as a clerk at #e a month1 and stumbled into a business career as a druggist4 ,then he became ,warder's understudy1 and piled up twice as many millions as he could count on his fingers4 ,as a climax he rose higher in public life than any other reaper king1 by serving twice as the ,governor of ,ohio4 ,as for ,j4 ,j4 ,glessner1 he is still active1 and one of the dozen solid pillars upon which the ,international ,harvester ,company is built4 ,such were the strong men whom ,william ,deering faced when he came1 without a shred of experience1 into the harvester world4 ,he had no ancient patent-rights1 like ,mc,cormick4 ,he could not outrace thirty competitors in a wheat-field1 like ,whiteley and ,jones and ,adriance and ,osborne4 ,one way was left open to him4 ,i'll beat them1 he said1 by making a better machine4 ,he set out upon such a search for improvements that1 during the rest of his life1 inventors fluttered around him like moths around a candle4 ,until #ahgi1 the best harvester was a self-binder that tied the sheaves with wire4 ,it was the invention of ,sylvanus ,d4 ,locke1 and had been developed to its highest point of perfection by a farm-bred inventor named ,c4 ,b4 ,withington1 who is still living in ,wisconsin4 ,the ,withington machine was pushed by ,mc,cormick with great energy1 and fifty thousand were sold between #ahgg and #ahhe4 ,it was a marvelously simple mechanism1 consisting mainly of two steel fingers that moved back and forth1 and twisted a wire band around each sheaf of grain4 ,as a machine it was a complete success2 but the farmers disliked it4 ,the wire will mix with the straw1 they said1 and our horses and cattle will be killed4 ,so1 when ,deering met ,john ,f4 ,appleby1 a stocky mechanic who claimed to have invented a twine self-binder1 he at once set him to work upon fifty of the new machines4 ,when ,deering saw his first ,appleby binder at work in a field of wheat1 he was enthralled4 ,here1 at last1 was the perfect harvester4 ,its strong steel arms could flash a cord around a bundle of grain1 tie a knot1 cut the cord1 and fling off the sheaf1 too quickly for the eye to follow4 ,it seemed magical4 ,what am ,i to do8 asked the farmer who bought the first of these machines1 as he climbed upon the seat and prepared to cut his grain4 ,do6 exclaimed ,john ,webster1 the ,deering mechanic4 ,do nothing6 ,,drive ,,the ,,horses4 ,the amazed farmer started the horses1 drove around the field1 and came back swinging his hat and shouting like a lunatic--as well he might4 ,for in the trail of his harvester the sheaves lay bound1 as though there were some kindly genie hidden among its wheels4 ,deering owned1 at that time1 not much more than a million dollars--the gleanings of thirty-five industrious years4 ,but he resolved to stake it all upon this amazing machine4 ,if he lost--he would be a poor man at fifty-three4 ,if he won--he would be the harvester king of the world4 ,i'll move the factory to ,chicago and make #c1jjj of these ,appleby twine-binders at once1 he said4 ,his partner1 ,e4 ,h4 ,gammon1 held back1 so the inflexible ,deering bought him out1 and from that day he1 like his greatest competitor1 ,mc,cormick1 ran a one-man business4 ,did you hear the news about ,deering8 gossiped his fellow manufacturers4 ,clean crazy on a twine-binder6 ,and1 far more discouraging1 the magical self-binder itself suddenly became ill-humored and refused to form its sheaves properly4 ,it was no easy exploit1 as any one may see1 to make the first #c1jjj of such complex machines4 ,no other artificial mechanism must so combine strength and delicacy4 ,no piano nor ,hoe press1 for instance1 is expected to operate while it is being jerked over a rough field or along the steep slant of a hill4 ,one day in the early spring of #ahhj1 ,deering and his chief lieutenants--,steward and ,dixon--were in a field of rye near ,alton1 trying to coax the new harvester to do its work4 ,all day long it was obstinate and perverse1 and the men were at their wits' end4 ,well1 boys1 said ,deering1 if we can't do better than this1 ,i'll lose #a1jjj1jjj4 ,try one more day1 said ,steward4 ,they went to their hotel1 and as it happened to be crowded1 the three were placed in a large double room4 ,steward and ,dixon were mad at me the next morning1 said ,deering1 when he told me of that critical occasion4 ,they had nothing at stake1 yet they had lain awake all night2 while ,i was apparently about to lose my only million1 and had slept like a log4 ,that day a slight change was made1 and the harvester became good-natured and obedient4 ,the whole #c1jjj machines were sold1 and created as much excitement as #c1jjj miracles4 ,they swept away competitors like chaff4 ,of a hundred manufacturers seventy-eight were winnowed out4 ,instead of losing his fortune1 ,deering cleared at once about four hundred thousand dollars1 for profits were large in those experimental days4 ,better still1 he became an acknowledged leader of his class4 ,he had taken the right line of development1 as ,mc,cormick had in #ahca1 and all others who could1 choked down their rage and followed--quick march6 ,the man who had found the right path was ,john ,f4 ,appleby4 ,he was the scout--the ,kit ,carson of the harvester business4 ,it was he--the inspired farm labourer of ,wisconsin--who had hurled another great impossibility out of the way of the world's farmers4 ,he did not of course originate the whole self-binder4 ,but he put the parts together in the right way and pushed ahead to success through a wilderness of failure4 ,there was a notable group of inventors in ,rockford who did much to put him on the right track4 ,one of these1 ,marquis ,l4 ,gorham1 was the originator of the self-sizing device that regulates the size of the bound sheaf4 ,another1 named ,jacob ,behel1 invented a knotter1 whittling it out of a branch of a cherry tree4 ,appleby has been1 and is yet1 a knight-errant of industry4 ,he takes his pay in adventure4 ,he dislikes to travel with the crowd4 ,when ,i saw him first1 in his ,chicago workshop1 his thoughts were far from twine-binders4 ,he was engaged on the task of perfecting a cotton-picker1 which he hopes will do as much for the ,south as his self-binder did for the ,west4 ,and it was with some difficulty that ,i could persuade him to disentangle the story of the twine-binder from the various other romances of his life4 ,in #ahee ,appleby was a rugged youngster doing chores on a farm for one dollar a week4 ,even this rate of pay was too high to the mind of the farmer who employed him2 for he was always whittling and making toy machinery1 instead of minding his work4 ,one day1 when ,appleby was seventeen1 he was binding grain after a reaper4 ,how do you like the work1 ,jack8 asked the farmer4 ,i don't like it1 said ,jack1 and what's more1 ,i believe ,i can invent a machine to tie these bundles4 ,ho6 ho6 laughed the farmer4 ,you little fool1 you can't invent anything4 ,twenty-five years later1 when ,appleby had made half a million by his invention1 and was manager of a factory at ,minneapolis1 he noticed an old man pushing a wheelbarrow in the factory yard4 ,haven't ,i seen you before8 he asked4 ,yes1 sir1 replied the old man4 ,i was the farmer who gave you your first job4 ,well1 said ,appleby1 you see ,i wasn't a little fool after all4 ,appleby actually had set to work to invent a knotting-machine when he was a farm-boy of seventeen1 and had made his first model at that age--in #aheh4 ,a young school-teacher named ,chester ,w4 ,houghton was the first man who put money back of the boy's invention4 ,he stood behind it to the extent of fifty dollars1 and then became alarmed at such a reckless speculation1 and quit4 ,had he been just a little more adventurous1 and a little more patient1 every dollar of his investment would have fruited into a thousand4 ,when the school-teacher deserted him1 and wanted the fifty dollars back1 ,appleby was discouraged4 ,the models that had been made at a gun shop in ,palmyra1 ,wisconsin1 drifted about4 ,they were sold at auction on one occasion for seventeen cents2 and the buyer thought they were not worth even that1 for he made a present of them to ,appleby4 ,then came the crash of the ,civil ,war4 ,appleby enlisted1 and for four years forgot knotters and thought only of guns4 ,yet while he lay in the trenches at ,vicksburg1 he whittled out a new device for rifles4 ,after the war1 a capitalist saw this device1 gave him #ejj for it1 and then1 before ,appleby's eyes1 sold a half interest in it for #g1jjj4 ,this awakened ,appleby to the value of inventions and made him an inventor for life4 ,once more he set to work on his long-neglected grain-binder1 and in #ahfg he drove his first completed machine into a field near ,mazomanie1 ,wisconsin4 ,the horses were fractious1 and after being jerked along for several rods1 the machine broke down1 to the great delight of the spectators1 most of whom knew ,appleby and regarded him as a crank4 ,but the machine had bound a couple of sheaves before it broke4 ,appleby displayed these1 and one man--,dr4 ,e4 ,d4 ,bishop--pulled a roll of money from his pocket and handed it to the inventor4 ,take this1 he said1 and make me a partner4 ,your invention will be a world's wonder some day4 ,all told1 ,dr4 ,bishop staked #a1ejj on ,appleby's genius1 for which1 twelve years later1 he drew out #hj1jjj4 ,this was the first of the many incidental fortunes scattered right and left in the path of the self-binder1 which began in #ahhj1 to sweep forward as gloriously as the triumphal car of a ,roman emperor4 ,as for ,william ,deering--the modest manufacturer from ,maine1 who in #ahgi joined forces with ,appleby1 no sooner had he sold the #c1jjj self-binders than he found himself floundering neck deep in an unexpected sea of troubles4 ,there was not a flaw in the binders4 ,they were cutting and tying the grain with the skill of #fj1jjj men4 ,but the twine-bill6 ,three thousand farmers swore that it was too high4 ,twine was an item that they had never in their lives bought in large quantities4 ,to pay fifty dollars--the price of a horse--for mere string that was used once and then flung away1 seemed outrageous4 ,it was like buying daily papers by the thousand1 or shoe-laces by the ton4 ,and so it came about that though ,deering had reduced the cost of wheat ten per cent41 he got little thanks for his superb machines--nothing but a loud and angry roar for better and cheaper twine4 ,deering moved against this new array of difficulties with quiet and inexorable persistence4 ,there were only three binder-twine makers in the ,united ,states1 and all warned him that he was pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp4 ,but ,deering pushed on until he met ,edwin ,h4 ,fitler1 afterward a mayor of ,philadelphia4 ,from the unassuming way in which ,deering stated his needs1 ,fitler concluded that the order would be a small one4 ,what you want1 he said1 is a single strand twine1 which cannot be made without a new line of machinery4 ,i regret to say that ,i cannot afford to do this for one customer4 ,well1 said ,deering1 ,i think ,i may need a good deal in the long run1 though ,i wish to begin with not more than ten car-loads4 ,ten car-loads6 ,for a moment ,fitler was dazed1 but only for a moment4 ,it was his chance and he knew it4 ,years afterward1 he was fond of telling how he made a million-dollar deal with ,william ,deering in two minutes4 ,thus1 whatever ,deering touched1 he improved4 ,he became the servant of the harvester4 ,he lavished fortunes upon it as sporting millionaires spent fortunes on their horses4 ,it was his one extravagance4 ,in his later endeavours to make the twine cheaper1 he spent #ae1jjj on grass twine1 #ce1jjj on paper1 #dc1jjj on straw1 and failed4 ,then he spent #afe1jjj on flax and succeeded4 ,he was for thirty years a sort of paymaster to a small mob of inventors who had new ideas or who thought they had4 ,there was one very able inventor--,john ,stone--who actually drew his salary and expenses every week for twenty years1 until he had perfected a corn-picking machine4 ,from first to last1 ,deering spent perhaps more than two millions of dollars on improvements1 according to one of his closest friends4 ,the fact is that the ,appleby binder had transformed ,deering from a man in business simply to make money1 into an enthusiast4 ,while he remained as careful of the business as ever1 he began to enjoy the work itself more than the profit4 ,he would still fuss if he saw half a dozen nails in the sweepings1 or any other waste of pennies4 ,but he poured the golden flood of profits back into his factory with a recklessness that amazed his friends4 ,he pampered his beloved machines with roller bearings and bodies of steel4 ,he sent them to ,europe and showed them to kings4 ,then1 as his enthusiasm grew1 he looked ahead to the time when even the farm-horse shall be set free from drudgery2 and he began to build automobile mowers and gasolene engines4 ,in fact1 he ripened1 as he worked1 into a seer who saw far past the gain or loss of the present into the splendour of the future4 ,illustration3 ,,cyrus ,,hall ,mc,c,o,r,m,i,c,k1 ,,jr4 ,,charles ,,deering ,photo by ,matzene1 ,chicago ,sagacity--that is1 perhaps1 the one word that best explains ,william ,deering's success4 ,he had an almost supernatural instinct1 so his competitors believed1 which kept him in the right line of progress4 ,there seemed to be a business compass in his brain4 ,he was never a master of men1 like ,mc,cormick1 nor a good mixer among men1 like ,whiteley2 but as an organiser of men he was easily superior to them both4 ,he knew how to pit his managers one against another1 as ,carnegie did2 and how to develop a factory into a swift and automatic machine4 ,he was a statesman of commercialism4 ,he piled up a big fortune1 and earned it4 ,it was his misfortune not to have been schooled on a farm1 as were most of the great reaper kings4 ,mc,cormick1 ,whiteley1 ,lewis ,miller1 ,morgan1 ,johnson1 ,osborne1 ,sieberling1 ,jones1 ,esterley1 and the ,marshes were all farm-bred4 ,but ,deering was shrewd enough to gather around him a corps of men who had the experience that he lacked4 ,at the head of this bodyguard stood a farmer's son--,john ,f4 ,steward4 ,such were the versatility and the loyalty of ,steward that he became ,deering's ,grand ,vizier4 ,he was inventive1 combative1 literary1 mechanical1 litigious4 ,it is now forty-two years since ,steward began to build harvesters2 and he has ten dozen patents to his credit4 ,so1 what with the mature business experience of ,deering himself1 and the skill and faithfulness of his captains1 the little factory that he had begun to manage in #ahgb expanded in thirty years into one of the two greatest harvester plants in the world1 rolling out in every workday minute two complete machines and thirty miles of twine4 ,largely because of his enterprise the spectres of ,famine are now beaten back in fifty countries1 yet there is not a word of self-praise in his conversation4 ,a man told me once that ,i was nothing more than a promoter1 he said2 and perhaps he was right4 ,i wasn't an inventor1 that's true4 ,all ,i did was to get the right men and tell them what ,i wanted them to do2 so ,i suppose ,i was just a promoter4 ,the few anecdotes that are told of him relate chiefly to his overmodesty4 ,once1 when he was travelling through ,kansas with ,john ,webster1 one of his trusty men1 a big ,westerner loomed up in front of him and said3 ,are you the ,deering that makes the self-binders8 ,yes1 replied ,deering1 blushing as red as one of his own mowers4 ,well1 said the ,westerner1 shaking him by the hand1 ,i want to say that you're a mighty smart man4 ,deering looked thoroughly uncomfortable1 and when the stranger had gone1 he leaned over to ,webster and said3 ,think of him saying that ,i made the binders when ,i pay you fellows for making them4 ,i never felt so foolish in my life4 ,he is now eighty-one--older than our oldest railroad4 ,in his lifetime he has seen his country grow seven times in population and twenty-four times in wealth4 ,he and his fellows have undeniably doubled the food supply of the world4 ,more--they said1 ,presto1 change6 and the drudges of the harvest-fields stood up and became men4 ,they have made life easier and nobler for untold myriads of people1 and have led the way to the brightest era of peace and plenty that the hunger-bitten human race has ever known4 ,yet less than thirty of the reaper kings became millionaires4 ,not one can stand beside the great financiers of steel and real estate and railroads4 ,and not one1 in his whole lifetime1 piled up as much profit as a ,carnegie or a ,rockefeller has made in a single year4 ,the get-rich-quick brigands of ,wall ,street meddled with the harvester business once--and never again4 ,that was twenty-one years ago1 when the famous ,binder-,twine ,trust set out with the black flag flying4 ,it was a skyrocket enterprise4 ,james ,r4 ,keene bulled the stock up to #acf4 ,this was the first and only easy money that was ever made in the harvester world4 ,then the farmers and the reaper kings rose up together and smote the ,trust in twenty legislatures4 ,its stock became waste paper2 and in the financial hurricane of #ahic1 it was the first victim4 ,no other business shows so tragic a death roll4 ,for fifty years its trail was marked by wreckage and disaster4 ,most of the few who succeeded at first1 failed later4 ,out of every ten who plunged into the scrimmage1 nine crawled out whipped or terrified4 ,and so the ,romance of the ,reaper was for fifty years a tragedy of competition4 ,out of more than two hundred harvester companies1 only fourteen survived in #aijb2 and these realised that if such waste and warfare continued1 their business would be destroyed4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,international ,,harvester ,,company ,for fifty years the ,harvester ,kings fought one another in the open field of competition4 ,their armies of agents1 drilled in the arts of rivalry1 waged a war in which quarter was neither given nor sought4 ,it was a fight almost of extermination4 ,out of two hundred companies that went to battle with flags waving and drums beating1 less than a dozen came home4 ,david ,m4 ,osborne backed a new self-binder1 lost a million1 and died of heartbreak4 ,j4 ,s4 ,morgan1 who had a small factory at ,brockport1 saw the immense ,mc,cormick and ,deering plants and quit4 ,even the great ,whiteley fell1 and ,lewis ,miller1 the father-in-law of ,edison and the founder of ,chautauqua1 went down like a great tree upon the hills4 ,walter ,a4 ,wood1 after forty years of success1 took ,governor ,merriam and ,james ,j4 ,hill as partners1 and set out to win the ,west for the ,wood ,company4 ,their factory was the pride of ,st4 ,paul4 ,their credit was the best1 and their fame was over all the prairies4 ,yet after five years of battling they surrendered2 and not one harvester is made to-day west of ,illinois4 ,it is a common opinion among harvester men that from first to last there has been more money put into the business than has ever been taken out--so enormously wasteful were these years of competition4 ,by #aijb the harvester business was merely a terrific and destructive war4 ,the agents were tearing the whole industry to shreds and tatters4 ,so far as the ,harvester ,men could see1 they must choose between combination and ruin4 ,not one of them was personally in favour of combination4 ,they were individualists through and through4 ,the spirit of competition had been bred in the bone4 ,so1 when several of them came together to check this warfare1 it was not of their own free will4 ,it was because they could do nothing else4 ,they were hurled together by social forces over which they had no control4 ,one by one these battle-worn ,westerners came to ,new ,york1 on an exploring expedition1 as one of them said4 ,here they met ,judge ,elbert ,h4 ,gary1 whom they had known intimately in ,chicago4 ,gary had been ,william ,deering's attorney for twenty-five years4 ,he was a farmer's son1 and had risen to be the official head of the ,steel ,trust2 so that he was the one man who had an expert knowledge at once of farms1 harvesters1 and mergers4 ,and naturally1 when the ,chicagoans ran to ,gary with their tales of woe1 he brought them across ,broadway into the office of ,j4 ,p4 ,morgan1 which had become in #aijb a sort of ,tribunal of ,industrial ,peace4 ,there were four of them--,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick1 ,charles ,deering1 ,j4 ,j4 ,glessner1 and ,w4 ,h4 ,jones--and all of them added to the strong preference for competition a definite opposition to trusts1 monopolies1 and stock speculation4 ,they were not the ,wall ,street type of millionaire4 ,in that time of booming optimism1 they might have made more money in one year by selling stock than they had made in thirty years by selling harvesters4 ,but no one of them had tried it4 ,the fact is that they cared more for the good-will of the farmers and the prestige of their machines than they did for larger profits4 ,the thing that troubled them most in the proposed consolidation of properties1 one of the ,morgan partners told me1 was the fear that prices would in any case have to be raised1 because of the increasing cost of labour and raw materials4 ,illustration3 ,,harold ,mc,c,o,r,m,i,c,k ,photo by ,matzene1 ,chicago1 #aije ,j4 ,j4 ,,glessner ,w4 ,h4 ,,jones ,photo by ,smith1 ,evanston1 ,ill4 ,,james ,,deering ,photo by ,dyer1 ,chicago ,no wonder that the financiers who undertook to organise them were driven almost to distraction by their obstinate independence4 ,they had as many contradictory opinions as a ,russian ,duma2 and it was soon clear that the only possible way to proceed was to keep them apart until all possible preliminaries were arranged4 ,so the four ,harvester ,men went back home until the details of the new combination should be worked out4 ,then they were summoned again to ,new ,york4 ,as was their custom1 they went to different hotels1 and each man was handled separately until he was in an organisable frame of mind4 ,this master-stroke of diplomacy was accomplished by ,george ,w4 ,perkins--,morgan's most versatile partner2 and it gave ,perkins a day and a night that he will never forget4 ,from morning until midnight--from midnight until the first ray of dawn slanted down ,broadway1 ,perkins dashed from hotel to hotel like a human shuttle4 ,deering conceded one point if ,mc,cormick would concede another4 ,glessner yielded one of his claims1 and ,jones withdrew something else4 ,inch by inch these stubborn men were pushed within tying distance of each other2 and the fifty-year harvester war was about to come to an end4 ,the next day ,perkins renewed the struggle1 but he was too tired to continue the cab driving between hotels4 ,he telephoned the four ,harvester ,men to meet him at ,morgan's office4 ,as each man climbed up the rusty iron steps of the ,morgan ,building he was switched by the big ,irish doorkeeper into one of those large inner rooms at the rear1 on the ground floor1 where many a broken business has been mended4 ,four men in four rooms1 with ,perkins flying in and out--such was the way that the great harvester company was finished4 ,it was a unique situation1 as much like an incident in comic opera as an affair of business4 ,but the ,morgan experts knew that if the four men were allowed to meet1 the old hurtful rivalries would break out afresh and the project might snap off like a broken dream4 ,to strengthen the new company with a big surplus of ready money1 a one-sixth interest was sold for twenty millions to ,morgan and several other ,new ,york financiers of the old reliable sort4 ,also1 a fifth harvester company1 in ,milwaukee1 was bought from ,stephen ,bull for about five millions4 ,and when the last rivet had been clinched and the last nail driven home1 the four ,westerners suddenly found themselves sitting around the same table1 in the new ,international ,harvester ,company1 of ,chicago4 ,there were several harvester companies that remained independent1 but probably not from choice4 ,i do not know of one that has not1 at some stage of its career1 tried to get into a trust4 ,fifteen companies were merged by ,colonel ,conger in #ahib1 but they were poorly fastened together and soon fell apart4 ,it is also a fact1 though one not before made public1 that the ,mutual ,life ,insurance ,company tried to form a second ,harvester ,combine in #aijc1 with four large manufacturing companies in the merger1 and under the presidency of ,e4 ,d4 ,metcalf1 of ,auburn1 ,new ,york4 ,when this project failed1 three independent companies--two in ,new ,york and one in ,canada1 offered themselves for sale to the ,harvester ,company4 ,it bought one--the ,osborne--for six millions1 and refused the others4 ,we are big enough now1 said ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick4 ,it is not safe for one company to have a monopoly4 ,what we want to do is to regulate competition1 not to destroy it4 ,besides the big ,osborne ,company1 which is now the third largest in the combine1 the ,harvester ,company has bought five smaller concerns1 and built two new plants--one in ,canada and one in ,sweden4 ,it is like the original ,united ,states--a union of thirteen industrial colonies4 ,its output has risen to #gjj1jjj harvesting machines a year1 including all varieties2 and its annual revenue is more than seventy-three million dollars4 ,with its #be1jjj employees and #db1jjj agents1 this one company is supporting as many families as there are in ,utah or ,montana4 ,a square mile of land would be too small to contain its factories4 ,at its hundred warehouses there is trackage for #ab1jjj cars4 ,around its workshops are six busy railways of its own1 whose engines last year pulled out #fe1jjj freight-cars1 jammed full of machinery for the farmers of the world4 ,its properties are so widespread that no member of the company has seen them all4 ,to run around their circle would be a trip of #ae1jjj miles4 ,it owns #bj1jjj acres of coal lands in ,kentucky1 #ajj1jjj acres of trees in ,arkansas1 ,mississippi1 and ,missouri1 and #dj1jjj1jjj tons of ore in the ,wisconsin and ,mesaba ,ranges4 ,it has staked its money--#abj1jjj1jjj--upon the belief that for fifty years longer1 at least1 the scientists will find no substitute for bread4 ,the fact that ,elbert ,h4 ,gary1 the official head of the ,steel ,trust1 is one of its directors1 has not prevented this self-sufficient company from owning a complete steel plant1 where #b1jjj ,hungarians make iron from ore1 and steel from iron4 ,it saws its trees into lumber in ,missouri1 and roasts its coal into coke in ,kentucky4 ,its domains are so extensive1 in fact1 that if they were contiguous1 they would make a ,harvester ,city as spacious as ,greater ,chicago4 ,but the most surprising feature of this unique corporation1 to one who sees it for the first time1 is the distracting variety of things that pour out of its factories4 ,its business is by no means to make harvesters and nothing else4 ,its true character seems to be that of a manufacturing department store for farmers4 ,as a matter of actual count1 ,i found in its factories and warehouses thirty-seven different species of machines1 besides all manner of variations of each sort4 ,here you will see1 not only a mower to cut the grass1 but a tedder 7a kind of steel mule1 with an incurably bad temper7 to kick and scatter the new-mown hay1 so that it will dry in the sun2 a rake to gather it together2 a loader to swing it on the wagon2 and a baler to compress it into bundles4 ,here are the self-binders1 not for the grain only1 but for corn and rice as well4 ,for the especial benefit of ,king ,corn1 whose tribute to this ,republic has lately swollen to twelve hundred millions a year1 the company is making machines that pluck the corn from the stalk with iron hands1 and others that wrench off the husks1 shell the corn1 and grind it into several varieties of breakfast food for the four-footed boarders of the farm4 ,here is a new machine1 much less elegant than useful1 for flinging manure over a field4 ,barefooted women did this work in the old brutal days of hand labour4 ,but now1 thanks to the brain of a canny ,canadian farmer1 ,joseph ,s4 ,kemp1 one worker can feed the hungry fields without so much as soiling the tips of the fingers4 ,the farmer's wife--and there are #aj1jjj1jjj of her in the ,united ,states1 has been the last one to be considered1 in this outpouring of machinery4 ,but ,i found at ,milwaukee a rebuilt factory belonging to the ,international1 where #b1ejj men are making fifty cream separators and #ajj gasolene engines a day1 both designed to make life easier for ,mrs4 ,farmer1 as well as for her husband4 ,also1 it will please her to know that she may soon be honking her way to town in an automobile buggy1 which the big corporation is making for farmers in a new factory in ,akron4 ,a harvester company must follow the whims of its customers1 almost as much as though it had newspapers for sale4 ,it must give #aj1jjj1jjj farmers what they want4 ,at the ,plano factory ,i saw #dgj different varieties of wheels2 and sixty-one kinds of wooden tongues at ,mc,cormick's4 ,nothing could be simpler than a tongue1 said ,maurice ,kane1 the chief mechanical expert of the ,international4 ,it is a mere pole4 ,if we suited ourselves1 we should only make two kinds--one for horses and one for oxen4 ,but the farmers of the world have sixty-one different ideas as to how a tongue ought to be made1 and we must give them what they ask for4 ,the last ,minnesota ,legislature1 in the simplicity of its heart1 proposed to establish a complete harvester plant for #bjj1jjj4 ,it may surprise the members of that ,legislature to know that the ,international has lately spent twice as much merely to improve one twine factory in ,st4 ,paul1 and four times as much to build one warehouse in ,chicago4 ,though it began its career with sixty million dollars' worth of equipment1 it has been forced by the pressure of its trade to spend sixteen millions more on its factories4 ,and for lack of a weather prophet1 it is obliged to carry over from five to six million dollars worth of machines each year1 which remain unsold in different countries4 ,by its very nature1 this industry cannot be carried on in a small way4 ,it is as essentially mutual and coperative as life insurance or banking4 ,if a malicious green bug devours the wheat in ,kansas1 the loss must be made up by larger sales somewhere else4 ,this1 no doubt1 is the main reason why every plant that was ever built to supply a local trade has failed4 ,no other manufacturing business carries so many risks or includes so many factors4 ,it is the most comprehensive industry in the world4 ,it is the link between the city and the farm4 ,it is both wholesale and retail1 ready-made and made to order1 local and international4 ,it must make what the farmer demands1 and yet teach him better methods4 ,it is at once a factory1 a bank and a university4 ,thus1 of necessity1 the ,harvester ,company represents in the highest degree the new ,american way of manufacturing3 everything on a large scale1 elaborate machinery1 unskilled workmen1 and a vast surplus to drive it past failures and misfortunes4 ,from its ore mines in the ,mesaba ,range1 where ,i saw a steam-shovel heap a fifty ton railroad car in ten swings1 to the lumber yard of the ,mc,cormick ,works1 where #bf1jjj1jjj feet of hardwood are seasoning in the sooty rays of the ,chicago sun1 it was a panorama of big production4 ,how many castings did your men make last year8 ,i asked of the hustling ,irish-,american who rules over one of the ,mc,cormick foundries4 ,very nearly #dd1jjj1jjj1 sir1 he replied4 ,and the gray iron foundry over there uses three times as much iron as we do1 and it made more than #ab1jjj1jjj4 ,fifty-six million castings6 ,merely to count these would take the whole ,minnesota ,legislature sixteen days1 even though every member worked eight hours a day and counted sixty castings a minute4 ,far1 far behind are the simple1 old-fashioned days1 when a reaping tool was made of two pieces--the handle and the blade4 ,there are now #cjj parts in a horse-rake1 #fjj in a mower1 #c1hjj in a binder4 ,when ,mc,cormick built his first hundred reapers in #ahde1 he paid four and a half cents for bolts4 ,that was in the mythical age of hand labour4 ,to-day fifty bolts are made for a cent4 ,so with guard-fingers4 ,mc,cormick paid twenty-four cents each when ,james ,k4 ,polk was in the ,white ,house4 ,now there is a ferocious machine1 which1 with the least possible assistance from one man1 cuts out #a1cjj guard-fingers in ten hours1 at a labour-cost of six for a cent4 ,also1 while exploring one of the ,chicago factories1 ,i came upon a herd of cud-chewing machines that were crunching out chain-links at the rate of #ef1jjj1jjj a year4 ,nearby were four smaller and more irritable automata1 which were biting off pieces of wire and chewing them into linchpins at a speed of #djj1jjj bites a day4 ,take out your watch and time this man1 said ,superintendent ,brooks of the ,mc,cormick plant4 ,see how long he is in boring five holes in that great casting4 ,exactly six minutes1 ,i answered4 ,well1 that's progress1 observed ,brooks4 ,before we bought that machine1 it was a matter of four hours to bore those holes4 ,in the immense carpenter shop he pointed to another machine4 ,there is one of the reasons1 he said1 why the small factories have been wiped out4 ,that machine cost us #b1ejj4 ,its work is to shape poles1 and it saves us a penny a pole2 that is profitable to us because we use #cjj1jjj poles a year4 ,in one of its five twine mills--a monstrous ,bedlam of noise and fuzz1 which is by far the largest of its sort in the world--there is enough twine twisted in a single day to make a girdle around the earth4 ,in the paint shop the man with the brush has been superseded--a case of downright trade suicide4 ,in his place is an unskilled ,hungarian with a big tank of paint4 ,souse6 ,into the tank goes the whole frame of a binder1 and the swarthy descendant of ,attilla thinks himself slow if he dips less than four hundred of these in a day4 ,the labour-cost of painting wheels is now one-fifth of a cent each4 ,ten at once1 on a wooden axle1 are swung into the paint bath without the touch of a finger4 ,and the few belated brush-men who are left work with frantic haste1 knowing that they1 too1 are being pursued by a machine that will overtake them some day4 ,in the central bookkeeping office of the ,harvester ,company ,i found some almost incredible statistics4 ,here1 for instance1 are a few of the items in last year's bill of expenses3 ,two hundred and thirty-five miles of leather belting1 #idj miles of cotton duck1 #b1jjj grindstones1 #c1jjj shovels1 #aj1jjj brooms1 #a1fgj1jjj buckles1 #a1ahe1jjj pounds paint1 #d1jjj1jjj pounds wire1 #ae1jjj1jjj pounds nails4 ,merely to maintain its experimental department costs this imperial company #g1jjj a week4 ,here are more than two hundred inventors and designers1 well housed and well salaried1 and not tramping from shop to shop1 as inventors did in the good old days4 ,they are paid to think2 and the company is mightily proud of them4 ,but the truth is that all large corporations which employ an army of unskilled workmen are being compelled to offset so much mere muscle by a special department of brains4 ,there is1 besides1 a most elaborate system of inspection4 ,in the ,deering factory ,i saw a squad of ten men who were testing the newly made binders with straw4 ,about three out of a hundred need fixing1 said the foreman4 ,the chains are tested by a violent pneumatic machine4 ,every link1 even1 is branded with a private mark--triangle4 ,and in the ,hamilton plant a new scheme is being tried--the whole packing gang has become a staff of inspection4 ,whenever a man finds a hundred defective pieces1 he gets an extra dollar4 ,one sharp-eyed ,scot in the packing-room confided to me that he had made as high as two shillin's a week4 ,such is the scope of the ,international ,harvester ,company1 created in #aijb4 ,as to the men who control it1 ,i have had the greatest difficulty in penetrating back of the business to their personal characteristics4 ,for they dislike the fierce light that beats upon a rich ,american4 ,of its president1 ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick the ,second1 the first word to be said is that he is not built on the same lines as his belligerent father4 ,he would fare badly1 very likely1 if he were in charge of a catch-as-catch-can business1 such as the reaper trade was thirty years ago4 ,the making of harvesters is1 to him1 half a duty--to his father1 his workmen1 and the machine itself--and half a profession--not a battle nor a game1 as it was with the first ,reaper ,kings4 ,he has no desire to play a lone hand in the business world4 ,and his painstaking purpose1 as a man of affairs1 is to secure less speculation and more stability1 less waste and more organisation1 less friction and more community of interest4 ,in all things he is a simple and serious man4 ,i have seen him work from noon until midnight2 but in my opinion1 if he really had his choice1 he would prefer a quiet homestead1 in the little town of ,princeton1 where he could pursue a life devoted to the interests of ,princeton ,university and the ,civic ,federation4 ,even now1 whenever he can get free from the treadmill of his office1 his greatest delight is to escape to a camp in the wild lands of northern ,michigan1 where he can dress like a fisherman and forget that he is the servitor of a hundred and twenty millions4 ,harold ,mc,cormick1 his brother1 and a vice-president of the big company1 is a boy-hearted man of thirty-five4 ,he has a quick-action brain2 but his strong point is his personal magnetism and likableness4 ,he knows the harvester business throughout1 having been a shirt-sleeve workman in the factory1 an agent at ,council ,bluffs1 and a field expert in several states4 ,most of the stories told about him illustrate his nave boyishness4 ,for instance1 when he had become an expert in handling the harvester1 an agent-in-chief near ,chicago telegraphed for a dozen men4 ,only eleven experts were available1 so ,harold volunteered to be the twelfth4 ,he had his working-card made out in the usual form1 entitling him to #ah a week4 ,on ,saturday night1 when the twelve men went to the agent-in-chief for their wages1 he said1 ,i want all of you to come in and have a conference with me to-morrow morning at ten o'clock4 ,sorry to say1 ,mr4 ,blank1 said young ,mc,cormick1 that ,i can't be here until ,monday4 ,the agent stormed4 ,how could anything be more important to a three-dollar-a-day man than his job8 ,well1 if you really must know the reason1 said the berated mechanic1 ,i have an appointment to go to church to-morrow morning with the ,rockefeller family4 ,the third brother--,stanley ,mc,cormick1 worked his way up from labourer to superintendent of the whole plant4 ,for years he rose at five o'clock every work-day morning1 and walked into the factory at six4 ,all three of the ,mc,cormicks show a remarkable sense of obligation1 almost of gratitude1 to their employees4 ,at the time the ,international was organised1 ,stanley said to the others3 ,what about the men8 ,there are some of them that deserve a share in the new company1 as much as we do4 ,so a list of the old employees was made1 from ,charlie ,mulkey1 the old watchman1 to ,r4 ,g4 ,brooks1 the superintendent1 and #a1ejj1jjj was divided among them4 ,recently a complete profit-sharing plan1 such as ,perkins had worked out for the ,steel ,trust1 was put in working order1 and about #bjj1jjj of extra money have been scattered through the pay-envelopes4 ,the two ,deerings1 who are now chairman and vice-president1 were disciplined in the same stern1 old-fashioned way as the ,mc,cormicks4 ,put this young man to work at the bottom rung of the ladder1 said ,william ,deering1 when his younger son1 ,james1 was graduated from the university4 ,being in many respects a chip of the old block1 ,james ,deering plunged into business with as much energy as though he had to toil for his millions as well as inherit them4 ,he became a field expert1 and followed the harvest from ,texas to ,north ,dakota4 ,he asked for no favours1 but sweltered along among the ,western farmers for several summers4 ,then he went to the foot of the ladder in the factory and wrestled with big iron castings and steel frames4 ,step by step he worked up1 until even his ,spartan father was satisfied and made him the manager of the whole plant4 ,at present there is perhaps no man in the harvester industry who has so great a variety of attainments as ,james ,deering4 ,he is a shrewd commercialist1 yet he has found time1 no one knows how1 to master several languages and to run the whole octave of self-culture4 ,charles ,deering1 the older of the two brothers1 had less farm experience1 as he served for twelve years in ,uncle ,sam's navy4 ,he was a lieutenant when he came ashore to help his father make harvesters4 ,at that time he did much to solve the binder-twine problem--how to get better twine and plenty of it4 ,then1 when the drama of consolidation was staged by ,morgan1 he took a leading part4 ,personally1 he is a bluff1 forceful1 but companionable man1 such as one would expect to find on the deck of a war-ship rather than in the telephone-pestered office of a sky-scraper4 ,the two other vice-presidents of the ,harvester ,company are battle-worn veterans of the competitive period--,j4 ,j4 ,glessner and ,william ,h4 ,jones4 ,glessner1 beginning as a bookkeeper in ,ohio1 has for many years been regarded as a sort of unofficial peacemaker and balance-wheel of the trade4 ,everybody confided in ,glessner4 ,he did as much as any one else to harmonise the warring ,harvester ,kings2 but it is also true that it was the gentle ,glessner who developed competition to the explosive point by originating the system of canvassing4 ,he poured first oil and then water on the fire4 ,as for ,william ,h4 ,jones1 he is a sturdy and genial ,welshman1 who was born and bred in a farmhouse4 ,as a boy he reaped wheat with a sickle in the valleys of ,wales4 ,about forty years ago1 when he had become an ,american1 he bought a reaper and a tent1 and set out to earn his fortune4 ,by working twenty hours a day1 he had earned enough money1 by #ahha1 to begin making reapers of his own1 at ,plano2 and he built up a large business4 ,the ,general ,manager of this big anti-famine organisation is a young ,illinoisan1 named ,c4 ,s4 ,funk4 ,he is the central man1 says ,perkins4 ,no other ,chicagoan of his age--he is only thirty-five--has pushed up so quickly to so high a place1 with nothing to help him except his own grit and ability4 ,to-day he manages a #fe1jjj-man-power corporation2 yet it is very little more than twenty years since he was trudging six miles on a hot ,july day1 to ask for his first job in a hay-field4 ,young as he was1 he was then the support of a widowed mother1 and there were seven children younger than he4 ,his office1 in which ,i was permitted to take notes for several days1 is a nerve-centre of the world4 ,everything that happens to the human race is of interest to this alert young chancellor of the ,harvester ,company4 ,a drought in ,argentina1 the green bug in ,kansas1 a tariff campaign in ,australia1 a shortage of farm labour in ,egypt1 a new railway in ,southern ,russia1 such are the bulletins that guide him through his day's work4 ,his wide-flung army is officered mainly by farmers' sons who had a knack for business or for machinery4 ,his assistant1 ,alex4 ,legge1 is an ex-cowboy from ,nebraska4 ,before the era of peace and unity began1 ,funk and ,legge had fought each other in twenty states4 ,legge was one of the best fighters ,i ever knew1 said ,funk2 and ,i think you might put him down as the most popular man in the company4 ,maurice ,kane1 the company's ,chief ,improver1 and a fine type of the ,irish-,american1 was born on a small farm near ,limerick4 ,he was a farm hand in ,wisconsin when he first saw a harvester1 and he has pulled himself up every inch of the way by his own abilities4 ,a4 ,e4 ,mayer1 the first of an army of forty thousand salesmen1 was born on a farm in ,new ,york4 ,he is a sort of human ,gatling gun1 loaded with the experience of his trade4 ,b4 ,a4 ,kennedy1 the overlord of the thirteen factories1 is a seasoned veteran who can remember when he stood by the forge of a country blacksmith shop and hammered out ploughs by hand4 ,only one of the company's generals1 ,h4 ,f4 ,perkins1 began life with such a luxury as a university education4 ,he is in charge of the raw materials--the coal and iron and lumber and sisal and flax4 ,these are a few of the men who manage this international empire of bread-machinery4 ,they are all practical men1 hard workers1 close to the farm and the farmer4 ,they are not fashionable idlers1 nor promoters1 nor ,wall ,street speculators4 ,and they have no more use for tickers than for telescopes--a fact which is vitally important1 now that they are making more than half the harvesters of the world4 ,such is the ,international ,harvester ,company from the inside4 ,but an outside view is equally necessary4 ,it is of tremendous interest to #aj1jjj1jjj ,american farmers to know the habits and the disposition of this powerful organisation4 ,as ,theodore ,roosevelt has said1 there are good combinations and bad ones4 ,which is the ,international ,harvester ,company8 ,in order to get the facts about it at first hand1 ,i interviewed the four chief competitors of the ,harvester ,company1 three ,attorneys-,general1 seven editors of farm papers1 four professors of agricultural colleges1 seven or eight implement agents1 thirty farmers in ,iowa1 ,minnesota1 and ,wisconsin1 two state governors1 and the ,federal ,bureau of ,corporations4 ,before ,i had gone far1 ,i learned that the big ,harvester ,company has been beset by a host of new troubles4 ,it is an evidence of the eternal futility of human ambition1 that when a group of warring ,harvester ,kings had made peace with one another1 when they had healed their wounded and buried their dead1 and sat down to enjoy a future of prosperous tranquillity1 up sprang a host of new enemies1 armed and double-armed with weapons from which there seemed to be no sort of defence4 ,their outposts were shattered by legislative dynamite4 ,tariff walls were built across their paths4 ,and half a dozen giant ogres1 otherwise known as ,attorneys-,general1 crashed into their peaceful business with destructive clubs of law4 ,the bigger the organisation the more trouble to protect and preserve it4 ,this is what ,abraham ,lincoln learned--what the whole ,united ,states learned1 half a century ago2 and it is the lesson that the harvester-makers are studying to-day4 ,it is a new phase of an old fact2 it is the ,tragedy of the ,trust4 ,some foreign nations1 too1 have taken their cue from ,american ,legislatures1 and have become almost as hostile to the ,chicago company as though it were exporting roulette wheels and burglars' jimmies4 ,france taxed half a million from it last year by a penalising tariff4 ,australia has made it a political issue4 ,germany takes a toll of #aa on every self-binder1 and ,austria takes #be4 ,roumania raised the duty on harvesters several months ago2 and there is a general feeling that the time has come to check the supremacy that the ,united ,states has always had in this line4 ,yet the fact that the ,harvester ,company has been fined in two states does not mean that it has taken advantage of its size to become a lawbreaker4 ,the crime of which it was declared guilty1 was the maintenance of the old practice of exclusive contracts1 which has been the almost universal custom for fifty years4 ,each agent was pledged not to sell any other company's goods4 ,the ,international abolished this requirement two years ago1 and several of the independent companies still retain it4 ,until the merger was organised it was regarded as fair enough4 ,it is one of the most usual habits of agency business4 ,but the ,american people are now demanding that a big company shall be much more square and moral than a small capitalist who is fighting for his life4 ,many of the old methods of the rough-and-tumble days have survived4 ,it is not possible to say ,presto1 change6 to #dj1jjj battling agents1 so that they shall at once begin to play fair and coperate4 ,but the general opinion is that the ,combine has raised the harvester business to a higher level4 ,at one of its branch offices ,i came accidentally upon a letter written by ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick1 in which he forbade the taking of rebates from railways4 ,you must clearly understand1 he wrote1 that this company will maintain a policy of absolute obedience to the law4 ,among the farmers of ,iowa and ,kansas ,i found no definite charges against the harvester combine--nothing but that vague dread of bigness which seems natural to the average mind1 and which even the great-brained ,webster had when he opposed the annexation of ,texas and ,california4 ,of four farm editors1 one was against all trusts on general principles2 and the other three believed that the evils of harvester competition were much greater than those of consolidation4 ,the bare fact that this one corporation has #abj1jjj1jjj of capital alarms the old-timers4 ,others have become more accustomed to the ,big ,facts of ,american business4 ,why1 said one implement dealer1 after all1 #abj1jjj1jjj is less than the ,american farmers earn in a week4 ,he might also have said that it was less than the value of one corn crop in ,iowa1 or half as much as the ,iowa farmers have now on deposit in their savings banks4 ,it is very little more than ,russell ,sage raked in through the wickets of his little money-lending office1 or than ,marshall ,field accumulated from a single store4 ,in fact1 if bread were raised one cent a loaf for one year in the ,united ,states alone1 the extra pennies would buy out the whole ,harvester ,trust1 bag and baggage4 ,the bulk of the farmers1 so far as ,i could harmonise their opinions1 are now too well accustomed to big enterprises among themselves to be scared by the ,chicago merger4 ,they have at the present time more than five thousand coperative companies of their own4 ,and some of these are of national importance2 as1 for instance1 the powerful ,cotton ,growers' ,trust1 and the ,farmers' ,business ,congress1 which owns #hjj elevators for the storage of grain4 ,my only objection to the ,international ,harvester ,company1 said a business man in ,st4 ,paul1 is that it sells its machinery cheaper in ,europe than it does in the ,united ,states4 ,i investigated this charge1 and found it wholly incorrect4 ,the greater expense and risk of foreign trade compels the manufacturers to ask almost as high prices as ,american farmers had to pay twenty years ago4 ,but there is a quite credible reason for this rumour4 ,it is simply this--that for some less progressive countries a crude1 old-fashioned reaper is being made1 to sell for #de4 ,the modern1 self-rake reaper is too complex for the simple mind of many a ,russian farmer1 so he is supplied with a clumsy machine which is #ae cheaper1 but which looked1 to my unskilled eye1 more than #cj worse4 ,no one accuses the ,trust of having unreasonably raised prices4 ,on the contrary1 it is generally given full credit for holding prices down1 in spite of the fact that it is paying from twenty to eighty per cent4 more for its labour and raw materials than was paid in #aijb4 ,generally speaking1 all farm implements except thrashing-machines are cheaper now than they were in #ahhj1 when the competition was most strenuous4 ,binders have dropped from #cbe to #abe2 hay-rakes from #be to #af2 and mowers from #hj to #de4 ,i paid #bjj for a self-binding harvester twenty-five years ago1 said a ,kansas farmer4 ,ten years later ,i bought another for #adj and in #aijg ,i bought one from the ,international for #abe1 which is in my judgment the best of the three machines4 ,the ,international has competitors1 too--very active and able ones4 ,binders are made by #d large independent companies1 mowers by #ag1 corn-shredders by #ah1 twine by #bf1 wagons by #aaf1 and gasolene engines by #abd4 ,of the thirty-seven different machines made by the ,international there are only three--hemp-reapers1 corn-shockers1 and rice-binders--that are made by no other company1 and even these machines are not protected by any basic patents4 ,powerful as the ,international is1 it is still far from the place where business is one long sweet dream of monopoly4 ,the four independent companies that make binders seem to have no fear of the ,trust4 ,we have no fault to find with it1 said ,president ,atwater1 of the ,johnson ,company4 ,we don't want it smashed4 ,why8 ,because our business has doubled since it was organised2 and because we would sooner compete with one company than with a dozen4 ,the ',trust' was the only thing that saved the whole harvester business from annihilation1 said the ex-president of another independent company1 when ,i pressed him for his personal opinion1 and promised not to use his name4 ,the cold fact is really this1 he added1 that the ,international ,harvester ,company has bettered conditions for the farmer1 for the independent companies1 and for everybody but itself4 ,the big combine has never misused its power1 said a third of the ,international's competitors4 ,now and then its agents make trouble1 just as ours do1 no doubt4 ,but the men at the top have always given us a square deal4 ,so it is my duty to state that on the whole the ,harvester ,combine is a good combination and not a bad one4 ,i have found it radically different from the get-rich-quick trusts that have been described in recent books and magazine articles4 ,it is not a monopoly4 ,it is an advocate of free trade4 ,its stock is not watered1 nor for sale in ,wall ,street4 ,and the men at the top are very evidently plain1 hard-working1 simple-living ,american citizens1 who are quite content to do business in a live-and-let-live way4 ,they are not thoroughly reconciled1 even yet1 to being a merger4 ,they look back with open regret to the wasteful but adventurous days of competition4 ,of the combination the elder ,mrs4 ,cyrus ,mc,cormick finely said3 ,it was a hurt of the heart4 ,each of our companies was like a family4 ,each had a body of loyal agents1 who had been comrades through many struggles4 ,but the terrible increase in expenses compelled us to subdue our feelings and to coperate with one another4 ,i am not a merger man myself1 said ,william ,deering1 although ,i believe that the ,international ,harvester ,company has been a benefit to the farmers4 ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick goes still further4 ,he is a trust-buster himself1 so far as the over-capitalised and oppressive leviathans of business are concerned4 ,he said to me frankly3 ,some of the hostility to our company is inspired by worthy motives1 growing out of the general opposition to the so-called trusts4 ,and when a ,north ,dakota congressman proposed in #aijd that the ,international ,harvester ,company should be investigated1 ,cyrus ,mc,cormick at once sent a message that amazed the ,bureau of ,corporations--,please come and investigate us1 he said4 ,if we're not right1 we want to get right4 ,yes1 said one of the highest officials of the ,roosevelt administration1 when ,i asked him to corroborate this very remarkable story4 ,it is true that from #aijd it has been the continued desire of the ,international ,harvester ,company that we should investigate them4 ,in fact1 during the last year 7#aijg7 they have urged us with considerable earnestness to make this investigation4 ,so1 this big business has evolved from simple to complex in accordance with the same laws that rule plants and empires4 ,it has probably not yet reached its full maturity1 for it is greater than any man or any form of organisation1 and the tiny ephemeral atoms who control it to-day are no more than its most obedient retinue4 ,they come and go--quarrel and make friends--live and die4 ,what matter8 ,the big business1 once alive1 grows on through the short centuries1 from generation to generation4 ,and what does it all mean--this federation of thirteen factory cities--this coordination of muscle and mind and millions--this arduous development of a new art1 whereby a group of mechanics can take a wagon-load of iron ore and a tree1 and fashion them into a shapely automaton that has the power of a dozen farmers8 ,it means bread4 ,it means hunger-insurance for the whole human race4 ,as we shall see in the next chapter1 it means that the famine problem has been solved1 not only for the ,united ,states1 but for all the civilised nations of the world4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,american ,,harvester ,,abroad ,the first ,american reapers that went to ,europe were given a royal welcome4 ,there were two of them--one made by ,mc,cormick and one made by ,hussey1 and they were exhibited before ,albert ,edward1 the ,prince ,consort of ,england1 at a ,world's ,fair in ,london in #ahea4 ,there had been reapers invented in ,england before this date1 but none of them would reap4 ,all the inventors were mere theorists4 ,they designed their reapers for ideal grain in ideal fields4 ,one of them was a preacher1 the ,rev4 ,patrick ,bell2 another1 ,henry ,ogle1 was a school-teacher4 ,james ,dobbs1 an actor1 invented a machine that cut artificial grain on the stage4 ,and a machinist named ,gladstone made a reaper that also worked well until he tried it on real grain in a real field4 ,but the exhibition of the ,american reaper in ,london did not result in its immediate adoption4 ,there was little demand for harvesters in ,england fifty years ago2 and in other ,european countries there was none at all4 ,farm labour was cheap--forty cents a day in ,england and five cents a day in ,russia2 and the rush of labourers into factory cities had not yet begun4 ,in the years following #ahea1 the ,american reaper did1 however1 become popular among the very rich4 ,it became the toy of kings and titled landowners4 ,by #ahfd ,europe was buying our farm machinery to the extent of #fjj1jjj4 ,this was less than she buys to-day in a week2 but it was a beginning4 ,several foreign manufacturers began at this time to make reapers1 notably in ,toronto1 ,sheffield1 ,paris1 and ,hamburg4 ,this competition spurred on the ,american reaper agents1 who were already taking advantage of the interest shown by royalty in the ,american reaper4 ,and from the close of the ,civil ,war on1 there was an exciting race1 generally neck and neck1 between ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick1 ,sr41 and ,walter ,a4 ,wood1 to see who could vanquish the most of these foreign imitators1 and bag the greatest number of kings and nobilities4 ,it was a contest that not only resulted in the triumph of the ,american reaper1 but also brought the ,reaper ,kings recognition and reputation abroad4 ,in #ahfg both ,mc,cormick and ,wood were decorated with the ,cross of the ,legion of ,honour by ,napoleon ,,iii42 and later they stood side by side to receive the ,imperial ,cross from the hand of the ,austrian emperor4 ,hundreds of medals and honours were showered upon these two inventor mechanics2 and the ,french ,academy of ,science1 in a blaze of ,gallic enthusiasm1 elected ,mc,cormick one of its members1 because he had done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man4 ,many and strange were the exploits of the ,american ,reaper ,kings at the courts and royal farms of the real kings4 ,unable to speak any language but their own1 unused to pomp and pageantry1 breezily independent in the ,american fashion1 the ,reaper ,kings plunged from adventure to adventure1 absolutely indifferent to everything but their reapers and success4 ,there is to be a trial of reapers at ,rome next ,june1 wrote ,david ,m4 ,osborne1 a ,new ,yorker who began to export reapers to ,europe in #ahfb4 ,think of invading the sacred precincts of that ancient place with ,yankee harvesters4 ,we will wake up the dry bones of these old countries1 and civilise and ,christianise them with our farm machinery4 ,c4 ,w4 ,marsh1 inventor of the ,marsh ,harvester1 made a sensational dbut in ,hungary in #ahgj4 ,several grand dukes had arranged for a great contest of the various sorts of reapers on one of the royal farms in ,hungary1 so that the ,minister of ,agriculture might take notice4 ,when the day arrived1 there were nine reapers at the farm1 mostly of ,european design4 ,marsh's strange-looking machine seemed to be a combination of reaper and workbench4 ,but ten minutes after the contest began1 ,marsh had the race won4 ,his machine was a new type1 the forerunner of the modern self-binder4 ,it was so made that two men could stand upon it and bind the grain as fast as it was cut4 ,but on this occasion ,marsh could hire no farmer to help him and was obliged to do the work alone4 ,the judges were stunned with amazement1 therefore1 when they found that he had bound three-quarters of an acre in twenty-eight minutes4 ,here was a man who could do in half an hour what few ,hungarian peasants could finish in less than a day6 ,he is an athlete1 said one4 ,a wizard1 said another4 ,before they could recover from their astonishment1 ,marsh had stored his harvester1 pocketed the prize of forty golden ducats1 and hurried away to his hotel1 eager for a bath and a chance to pick the thistles out of his hands4 ,but the grand dukes and miscellaneous dignitaries were not to be escaped so easily4 ,an officer in gorgeous uniform was sent to find ,marsh and bring him forthwith to the main dining-hall of the city4 ,here a banquet was prepared1 and a throng of high personages sat down1 with ,marsh at the head of the table1 cursing his luck and nursing his sore fingers4 ,at the close of the banquet1 amid great applause1 a medal was pinned upon his coat1 and the whole assemblage hushed to hear his reply4 ,now ,marsh1 like two-thirds of the ,reaper ,kings1 could no more make a speech than walk a rope4 ,on only one previous occasion had he faced an audience1 and that was at the age of twelve1 when he had recited a scrap from the ,lay of the ,last ,minstrel at a school entertainment4 ,as he rose to his feet1 this poetic fragment came into his mind2 and so1 half in fun and half in desperation1 ,marsh assumed the pose of a ,demosthenes and addressed the banqueters as follows3 ,o ,caledonia6 ,stern and wild1 ,meet nurse for a poetic child6 ,land of brown heath and shaggy wood1 ,land of the mountain and the flood1 ,land of my sires6 ,what mortal hand ,can e'er untie the filial band ,that knits me to thy rugged strand6 ,that was the first and only speech of my life1 said ,mr4 ,marsh1 when ,i saw him in his home as ,de,kalb1 where he has retired from business4 ,but it certainly established my reputation as an orator in that region of ,hungary4 ,at one famous competition near ,paris1 in #ahgi1 three reapers were set to work in fields of equal size4 ,the ,french reaper led off and finished in seventy-two minutes4 ,the ,english reaper followed and lumbered through in sixty-six minutes4 ,then came the ,american machine1 and when it swept down its stretch of grain in twenty-two minutes1 the judges were inclined to doubt either their watches or their eyesight4 ,another of these tournaments1 which also did much to advertise the ,united ,states as the only genuine and original reaper country1 took place on an ,english estate in #ahhj4 ,there was only one ,american reaper in the race1 and in appearance it was the clown of the circus4 ,the ship that carried it had been wrecked on the ,irish coast1 so that when it arrived the machine was rusted and dingy4 ,cyrus ,h4 ,mc,cormick1 ,jr41 had it in charge4 ,he was then a youth of twenty-one1 and equally ready for an adventure or a sale4 ,there was no time to repaint and polish the machine1 so he resolved to convert its forlorn appearance into an asset4 ,oil her up so she'll run like a watch1 he said to his experts4 ,but don't improve her looks4 ,if you find any paint1 scrape it off4 ,and go and hire the smallest1 scrubbiest1 toughest pair of horses you can find4 ,the next day five or six foreign reapers were on hand1 each glittering with newness and drawn by a stately team of big ,norman horses4 ,the shabby ,american reaper arrived last1 and met a shout of ridicule as it rolled into its place4 ,but in the race1 ,old ,rusty1 as the spectators called it1 swept ahead of the others as though it were an enchanted chariot1 winning the gold medal and an enviable prestige among ,british farmers4 ,in ,germany1 as in ,england1 the reaper was introduced into general use through royalty4 ,this was in #ahga1 when a ,new ,york ,reaper ,king named ,byron ,e4 ,huntley gave the ,german emperor and empress their first view of harvesting on the ,american plan4 ,the exhibition took place in a grain-field that lay near the royal residence at ,potsdam4 ,at first1 the empress watched the machine from a window2 but soon she became so keenly interested that she went into the field to study it at closer range4 ,i admire you ,americans1 she said to the delighted ,huntley4 ,you are so deft--so ingenious1 to make a machine like this4 ,the present ,emperor of ,germany is not merely interested in ,american harvesters2 he is an enthusiast4 ,on several occasions he has held harvester matines for the benefit of his cabinet ministers1 so that they could see with their own eyes the superiority of machinery to hand-labour4 ,the first of these matines was given on one of the ,kaiser's farms1 near the ancient city of ,bonn1 in #ahif2 and ,i was told the story by ,sam ,dennis1 the ,illinois ,irishman who was in charge of the harvester4 ,dennis arranged a contest between his one machine and forty ,polish women who cut the grain with old-fashioned sickles4 ,as soon as the emperor and his retinue had arrived1 all on horseback1 a signal was given and the strange race began4 ,on one side of the field were the forty women1 bent and browned by many a day's toil under the hot sun4 ,on the other side was ,sam ,dennis1 sitting on his showy harvester4 ,get ap6 said ,dennis to the big ,german horses1 and the grain fell in a wide swath over the clicking knife1 swept upward on the canvas elevator into the swift steel arms and fingers1 and was flung to the ground in a fusillade of sheaves1 each bound tightly with a knotted string4 ,illustration3 ,,american ,,self-,,binders ,,on ,,the ,,estate ,,of ,,president ,,fallieres1 ,,in ,,france ,the emperor was radiant with delight4 ,being somewhat of an expert himself1 he rode here and there and showed1 with many gestures1 the differences between the old way and the new4 ,some of the grain had been blown down4 ,nothing but a sickle could cut it1 in the belief1 at that time1 of the average ,german farmer4 ,on the contrary1 as the emperor pointed out to his ministers1 the harvester was raising the fallen grain and cutting it without the waste of a handful while the women were trampling much of it under their bare feet1 as they jostled one another in the stubbled field4 ,most wonderful of all1 the one machine was soon seen to be doing more work than the whole mob of women drudges4 ,the field had been evenly divided before the race began1 and there was some wheat still uncut on the women's side when ,sam ,dennis said ,whoa6 to his horses1 and condescended to enter into a free and easy conversation with the distinguished onlookers4 ,for the forty ,polish women1 the new harvester meant a better life finally1 although at the time they hated the red monster of a machine that was about to take their jobs4 ,in payment for the long1 sweating work of the harvest-field they received only twenty-five cents a day4 ,probably what some of those women did1 when they saw themselves displaced1 was to buy a steerage ticket to the country where the red harvester was made2 at any rate ,i found two thousand women in the harvester factories of ,chicago1 earning #i a week1 and most of them1 as it happened1 were ,polish4 ,even ,bismarck1 the grim old unifier of ,germany1 yielded to general opinion a short time before his death1 and bought an ,american self-binder4 ,i was told of the incident by ,c4 ,h4 ,haney1 who made the sale1 and who is to-day the head of the ,foreign ,department of the ,harvester ,company4 ,bismarck sat in his carriage1 said ,haney1 but he ordered his driver to follow the harvester as closely as possible4 ,he looked very old and feeble4 ,for quite a while he watched me operating the machine4 ,then he made a sign to me to stop4 ,let me see the thing that ties the knot1 he said4 ,i took off the knotter and brought it to his carriage4 ,with a piece of string ,i showed him how the mechanism worked1 and gave him a bound sheaf1 so that he could see a knot that had been tied by the machine4 ,the old man studied it for some time4 ,then he asked me--',can these machines be made in ,germany8' ',no1 your ,excellency1' ,i said4 ',they can be made only in ,america4' ',well1' said ,bismarck1 speaking very good ,english1 'you ,yankees are ingenious fellows4 ,this is a wonderful machine4' ,when ,loubet was ,president of ,france1 he and ,seth ,low1 of ,new ,york1 were walking together over the ,president's estate4 ,loubet pointed to a reaper which was being driven through a yellow wheat-field4 ,do you see that machine8 he remarked4 ,i bought it from an ,american company in #ahgj1 and ,i have used it in every harvest since that time4 ,i have four of those machines now1 and ,i want to say to you that they are the most useful articles that come to us from the ,united ,states4 ,i am stating no more than the simple truth when ,i tell you that without ,american harvesters1 ,france would starve4 ,in still other countries the ,american reaper has been popular with kings and potentates4 ,the ,sultan of ,turkey and the ,shah of ,persia each bought one during the ,chicago ,world's ,fair4 ,and the young ,king of ,spain1 who ordered a mower in #aijc1 narrowly escaped being minced up by its knives4 ,being an impulsive youth1 he gave a cry of joy at sight of the handsome machine1 sprang upon the seat1 and lashed the horses without first laying hold of the reins4 ,the horses leaped1 and the seventeen-year-old ,alphonso went sprawling4 ,twenty workmen ran to his help1 and one level-headed ,american mechanic caught the reins2 so the worst penalty that the boy king had to pay for his recklessness was a tumble and a bad scare4 ,in ,russia1 the ,czar and the grand dukes at first bought reapers partly as toys and partly as strike-breakers4 ,if the labourers on their estates demanded more pay than fifty cents a week1 the manager would drive them in a body to his barn1 then throw open the doors and show them five or six red harvesters4 ,do you see these ,american machines8 he would say4 ,unless you go back to work at the same wages1 ,i will reap the grain with these machines1 and you will have no work at all1 and no money4 ,a look at these machine-devils has usually sent the cowed serfs back to their sickles4 ,but here and there it has set them to wondering whether or not a fifty-cent-a-week job was worth having1 and so has given them an ,a ,b ,c lesson in ,american doctrines4 ,illustration3 ,,king ,,alphonso ,,of ,,spain ,,driving ,,an ,,american ,,seeder ,many of the ,russian nobility1 too1 have begun to learn a trifle about democracy from the ,american harvester agents4 ,there is a certain young baron1 for example1 whose estate is not far from ,riga4 ,last year1 to be in fashion1 he bought a ,chicago self-binder4 ,when it arrived1 there came with it1 as usual1 an expert mechanic to set it up and start it in the field4 ,in this case1 the mechanic was a big ,german-,american named ,lutfring1 born in ,wisconsin1 of ,forty ,eighter stock4 ,the baron was evidently impressed by the manly and dignified bearing of ,lutfring1 who stood erect while the native workmen were bowing and cringing in obeisance4 ,and when ,lutfring said to him1 ,now1 ,baron ,hahn1 we are all barons in my country1 but you'll pardon me if ,i do this work in my shirt-sleeves1 the baron was so taken by surprise that he offered to hold ,lutfring's coat4 ,half an hour later he was at work himself1 doing physical labour for the first time in his life4 ,and when the harvester had been well launched upon its sea of yellow grain1 he took ,lutfring--the baron from ,wisconsin--to dinner with him in the castle1 and spent the greater part of the afternoon showing him the family portraits4 ,from such beginnings the harvester has advanced1 to make in ,russia the greatest conquests it has achieved anywhere4 ,more business is now being done in the land of the ,czar than was done with the whole world in #ahhe4 ,one recent shipment1 so large as to break all records1 was carried from ,chicago to ,new ,york on #c1jjj freight-cars1 and transferred to a chartered fleet of nine steam-ships1 #e1jjj1jjj worth of hunger-insurance4 ,during the ,russo-,japanese ,war a striking incident occurred that showed the respect of the government for ,american harvesters4 ,several troop-trains that were on their way to the front were suddenly side-tracked1 to make way for a long freight train1 loaded with heavy boxes4 ,the war generals and grand dukes in charge of the troops were furious4 ,why should their trains be pushed to one side and delayed1 to expedite a mere consignment of freight8 ,they telegraphed their indignation to ,st4 ,petersburg1 and received a reply from ,count ,witte4 ,the freight train must pass1 he said4 ,it is loaded with ,american harvesters4 ,it means bread4 ,as a result of this attitude1 there are now some provinces in southern ,russia where not even ,secretary of ,agriculture ,james ,wilson would find much fault with the farming4 ,i have secured the figures for the ,province of ,kuban1 in the ,caucasus4 ,here there are #c1ejj thrashing-machines1 #e1jjj grain-drills1 #cg1jjj harvesters1 #ej1jjj harrows1 #gj1jjj grain-cleaners1 and #fe1jjj cultivators4 ,this is a region where1 one generation ago1 were only the wooden plough1 the sickle1 and the flail4 ,there is1 to be sure1 still a dense mass of ,russians whose yearly habit it is to wait until their wheat is dead ripe1 then in a few days of frantic labour to cut down half of it with sickles1 leaving the rest to rot in the fields4 ,and in one ,caucasian province1 richer in its soil than ,iowa1 it is the custom of the wandering natives to move every three years to a new tract of land1 in order to avoid the trouble of fertilising the soil4 ,i have seen farmers ploughing in ,russia with a piece of board1 said one agent4 ,and ,i have seen their thrashing done by the feet of oxen4 ,but the new idea has been planted and is growing4 ,russia is the land of to-morrow1 said another expert4 ,we have been educating the farmers there for seventeen years1 yet we have only scratched the surface4 ,we who have lived among the ,russian peasants expect great things from them4 ,they have succeeded1 then1 in their campaign for the supremacy of the ,american reaper--the ,reaper ,kings who enlisted the crowned heads and the nobility of ,europe in their service4 ,by #ahii ,europe was a customer at our farm machinery factories to the extent of twelve millions a year4 ,this figure was doubled in #aijf1 and is now increasing by leaps and bounds4 ,all told1 this one industry has brought us #aej1jjj1jjj of foreign money in less than fifty years4 ,europe has sent us emigrants--twenty-five million in the past seventy-five years4 ,but we have more than replaced them with labour-saving farm machinery4 ,there were in #aijg as many ,american harvesters in ,europe as would do the work of eleven million men4 ,if our foreign trade goes ahead at its present rate of speed1 we shall soon have ,europe hopelessly in our debt1 in this exchange of men for machinery4 ,in the past four years1 for instance1 ,europe has sent us less than four million emigrants1 but we have sent to ,europe1 in that time1 enough agricultural automata to equal the labour of five million men4 ,and this means much to ,europe4 ,what with her #d1ejj1jjj soldiers and her #d1jjj1jjj public officials1 she has to serve more than twenty-five million meals a day to men who are non-producers4 ,she has to clothe and house these governmental millions and their families4 ,how could she do this if it were not for the eleven million man-power of her ,american harvesters1 and the half billion bushels of reaper-wheat that she can buy from other countries8 ,france must have our harvesters because she has been short of men since the wars of ,napoleon4 ,she has half a million soldiers and nine-tenths of a million officials4 ,even now1 with harvesters clicking merrily in all their largest grain-fields1 she and ,germany cannot feed themselves4 ,spain at one time exported wheat1 but at present is buying #aj1jjj1jjj bushels a year4 ,england grows less than a quarter as much as will feed her people4 ,and ,russia would be famine-swept from end to end1 in spite of her #cj1jjj1jjj farmers and her illimitable acres1 if she had to depend wholly upon the sickle and the scythe4 ,but the story is by no means ended with ,europe4 ,to-day the sun never sets and the season never closes for ,american harvesters4 ,they are reaping the fields of ,argentina in ,january1 ,upper ,egypt in ,february1 ,east ,india in ,march1 ,mexico in ,april1 ,china in ,may1 ,spain in ,june1 ,iowa in ,july1 ,canada in ,august1 ,sweden in ,september1 ,norway in ,october1 ,south ,africa in ,november1 and ,burma in ,december4 ,it is always harvest somewhere4 ,the ripple of the ripened grain goes round the world and the ,american harvester follows it4 ,even from this incomplete list one may begin to understand how tremendous is the task that the ,international ,harvester ,company has assumed in undertaking to cater to the farmers of fifty countries--to adapt itself to their various customs4 ,in ,holland1 for instance1 where the grass is short and thick1 a mower must cut as close as a barber's clippers2 and in ,denmark1 where moss grows under the grass1 it must cut so high as to leave the moss untouched4 ,the careful ,germans of ,wisconsin will buy a light harvester1 such as the ,milwaukee2 but in ,argentina a light machine would be racked into junk in a season4 ,the ,argentinians1 having raised cattle for generations1 rush to the harvest in cowboy fashion4 ,it is the joy of their lives to hitch six or eight horses to a big header1 crack the long whip1 and dash at full gallop over the rough ground4 ,there are small horses in ,russia1 big ones in ,france1 oxen in ,india1 and camels in ,siberia1 and the harvesters must be adapted to each4 ,certain backward countries demand a reaper without a reel4 ,australia must have a monster machine called a stripper1 which combs off the heads of the grain4 ,california and ,argentina1 because of their dry climate1 can use headers1 a combination of reaper and thrashing-machine4 ,and so the ,american harvester has become a citizen of the world1 adopting the national dress of each country4 ,the men who are dealing hand to hand with these problems are no longer the ,reaper ,kings1 personally introducing their harvesters through royalty and nobility4 ,these have been succeeded by an army of fifteen hundred ,american harvester experts4 ,they are all salaried1 most of them by the ,international2 and their work is to put the farmers of the world to school4 ,they are the teachers of a stupendous kindergarten4 ,as an example of the rapidity with which they are sometimes able to teach1 take the ,philippines4 ,nine years ago the ,filipinos spent nothing whatever for farming machinery2 in #aije they bought #ij1jjj worth4 ,even yet1 however1 they do not raise enough rice to feed themselves2 and although half of them are farmers1 only one-twentieth of their land is cultivated4 ,illustration3 ,,bismarck ,,having ,,his ,,first ,,view ,,of ,,an ,,american ,,self-,,binder ,many of our agents are now living in ,siberia with their families1 said ,c4 ,s4 ,funk1 the ,general ,manager of the ,international4 ,they are teaching the mujiks to grow wheat and harvest it4 ,we have similar missionaries in ,south ,africa and ,south ,america and most of the countries of the world4 ,some of them have gone as far as water and rail would carry them1 and have then crossed the mountains with their machinery on the backs of mules1 so that they might teach the natives how to farm on the ,american plan4 ,all told1 we have more than a thousand such missionaries in foreign countries4 ,in ,chicago1 ,i met two of the leaders who are in control of this army of teachers4 ,one was a strong-faced young ,illinoisan named ,couchman1 who handles several nations from ,hamburg2 and the other was a courteous commercial diplomat named ,la ,porte1 who supervises ,france1 ,spain1 ,italy1 and ,northern ,africa from his office in ,paris4 ,each is in charge of several hundred ,american mechanics1 who are exiled from home for the sake of our harvester trade4 ,no renown comes to these men4 ,no medals are pinned upon their coats4 ,they are only one regiment in the great pay-envelope army of ,american mechanics4 ,but they are on the firing-line of the greatest battle against ignorance and famine that has ever been fought4 ,they are the pioneers of the new farmer4 ,to show the world's peasantry how to work with brains and machinery1 to bring them up to the ,american farmer's level--that is their task4 ,what could be more essentially ,american1 or more profitable to the human race8 ,many ,european farmers1 of course1 are easily up to the ,kansas level2 but the vast majority have been mistaught that the path of the farmer must forever be watered with sweat4 ,many of them are so cramped by the shackles of drudgery that they cannot even conceive of the value of leisure4 ,why don't you use a scythe8 ,then you could cut twice as much1 said ,horace ,greeley1 who was deeply interested in farm machinery and agriculture1 to a ,french peasant4 ,the peasant scratched his head4 ,this was a new idea4 ,because1 he answered stodgily1 ,i haven't got twice as much to cut4 ,the quick1 handy ways of ,american farmers are seldom found in other countries4 ,a ,swiss will put a big stone upon a land-roller1 to give it weight1 and then walk behind it4 ,to ride on the roller himself does not occur to him4 ,a ,south ,german will usually take the reel off his reaper1 and handle the grain by hand4 ,operating five levers is too great a tax upon his mind4 ,an ,argentinian wastes his pesos by hiring drivers--one on the seat and another astride one of the horses4 ,a ,spanish farmer sent for me on one occasion1 an expert told me1 and ,i found him in great trouble4 ,he had bought a new harvester1 and put it together inside his barn1 which had only one narrow door4 ,he had to choose between taking the machine to pieces and pulling his barn down4 ,next to ,russia1 in the list of countries that this army of experts has won to the harvester1 comes ,canada4 ,like the trek of the ,boers into the ,transvaal1 and of the ,japanese into ,korea1 there has been a trek of three hundred thousand ,american farmers into ,western ,canada--into the new forty-bushel-to-the-acre wheat-land of ,alberta4 ,most of these emigrants were ,minnesotans and ,dakotans2 therefore they are not poor4 ,they carried two hundred millions across the border4 ,and they are now uprearing a harvester-based civilisation in a vast region that will probably some day have a population of twenty-five million people4 ,that billiard-table country--,argentina--stands third among the foreign patrons of our ,harvester ,kings4 ,as a wheat nation it is little older than ,alberta4 ,it was only about eighteen years ago1 after three centuries of revolution1 that ,argentina settled down to raise wheat and be good4 ,to-day the ,argentinians raise more wheat than ,germany1 and their country has become a land of milk and honey4 ,it is a ,south ,american ,minnesota1 but eleven times larger1 made fertile by the slow-moving ,platte ,river--a hundred miles wide when it reaches the sea--which moves through its plains like an irrigating canal4 ,the fourth in rank of our harvester buyers is ,australia1 which is now sending a yearly tribute of more than a million to the ,international ,company4 ,this profitable reciprocity between ,chicago and the island continent was greatly furthered when the ,international bought the sixty-five-acre ,osborne plant1 at ,auburn1 ,new ,york1 which had been remarkably successful in its ,australian1 as well as its ,french1 trade4 ,illustration3 ,,an ,,american ,,harvester ,,at ,,work ,,in ,,argentina ,ride along any of the historic roadways of the world and you will see the painted automata from ,chicago4 ,on the road to ,mandalay1 and along the ,appian ,way1 and the trail of death that marks the flight of ,napoleon from ,moscow1 you will find these indispensable machines4 ,they are cutting grass and wheat on the battle-fields of ,austerlitz and ,sedan and ,waterloo4 ,scutari1 near the ,adriatic ,sea1 bars out foreign machinery by law2 but ,roumania has been using our reapers and mowers for more than fifteen years4 ,once in a while a reaper is sent over the ,andes on muleback2 or into ,central ,china via the wheelbarrow express4 ,and now that there are irrigation pumps at the base of the ,sphinx1 that ancient female1 who has been staring at sand-hills for three thousand years may soon look across yellow fields in which ,american binders are clicking cheerfully4 ,they are for sale1 too1 in the holy cities of ,rome1 ,jerusalem1 ,mecca1 and ,benares--almost everywhere but ,lhasa1 the sacred capital of ,tibet4 ,so far as ,i can learn1 not one harvesting machine of any kind has entered that land of mystery and superstition4 ,in a few other countries harvesters are not numerous4 ,very few have been sold or will be in ,japan4 ,here are the smallest farms in the world4 ,a fork and a pair of scissors would seem much more appropriate implements for such tiny plots4 ,take the whole arable area of ,japan1 multiply it by three1 and you will have only the state of ,illinois4 ,in ,india1 where a family lives on fifty cents a week1 where one acre makes three farms and an entire farm outfit means no more than a ten-dollar bill1 a harvester is still almost as great a curiosity as an ,indian tiger is to us4 ,one of the harvester agents told me of a rich ,hindoo who bought a complete set of ,american farm machines1 and had them set in a row near his house1 apparently regarding them only as curios from a foreign land4 ,they have never been used1 and a mob of starving labourers reap his grain by hand within sight of his idle machines4 ,there are few harvesters in ,asia ,minor1 where farmers live almost like groundhogs--a whole family in one windowless hut of burnt clay4 ,and there are fewer still in ,africa1 where five million idle acres of fertile land will some day be made to work for the human race4 ,but since the formation of the big ,chicago company1 every foreign nation is being reached and taught to throw away its reaping-hooks and to cut its grain in a civilised way4 ,there is now practically no great city anywhere in which a farmer cannot buy one of the handsome red harvesters that have done so much to give a full dinner-pail to the civilized nations4 ,the world is mine oyster1 says the ,international ,harvester ,company4 ,in the first five years of its career1 it has sent to foreign countries #ibj1jjj harvesters of all sorts1 for which it has been paid #gj1jjj1jjj4 ,it has doubled its foreign sales and now makes two-third of the harvesters of the world4 ,what with the profits1 and the big orders1 and the medals1 and the appreciation of monarchs1 the ,harvester men have found their foreign trade from the first a business de luxe4 ,in fact1 one of the principal reasons why they quit fighting was that they might handle this world commerce in an organised way4 ,to-day they are not battling with one another on the royal farms of ,europe1 like gladiators who make sport for emperors4 ,there is more business and less adventure4 ,they have a geography of their own1 and have divided the whole world into eight provinces4 ,the ,domestic ,department of the ,international comprises the ,united ,states and ,canada and is managed from ,chicago4 ,central ,europe1 with ,russia and ,siberia1 has its headquarters at ,hamburg2 ,western ,europe and ,northern ,africa are handled from ,paris2 ,great ,britain is directed from ,london2 ,south ,america from ,buenos ,ayres2 ,australia from ,melbourne2 ,new ,zealand from ,christchurch2 and ,mexico from ,mexico ,city4 ,such is the commercial empire that has its seat at the foot of ,lake ,michigan4 ,other countries can sell us automobiles and bric-a-brac4 ,they may even get over our tariff wall with hay and cotton and steel and lumber4 ,but they have never dared to try to sell us farm machinery4 ,every harvester in the ,united ,states was made at home4 ,illustration3 ,,gathering ,,in ,a ,,finland ,,harvest ,either one of the two immense harvester plants of ,chicago is larger than the combined plants of ,england1 ,germany1 and ,france4 ,france1 recently1 made a brilliant dash toward success in the harvester business4 ,m4 ,racquet1 a journalist1 built a great factory at ,amiens4 ,he bought the best ,american machinery4 ,he allied himself with a savings bank and sold stock to the farmers4 ,he was protected by a high tariff4 ,but1 alas for his eloquent prospectus6 ,his selling force was too small4 ,his ,american machinery made more reapers in a month than he could sell in a year4 ,and in #aijd he fell into bankruptcy under a debt of ten million francs4 ,an ,american harvester is practically above competition in foreign countries1 and commands an exceptional price4 ,as for tariffs1 there is a wide open door in ,great ,britain1 ,holland1 ,norway1 ,bulgaria1 ,brazil1 ,servia1 and ,south ,germany4 ,but there is a toll-gate fee of #be per harvester in ,hungary1 and #bj in ,france2 and for lack of a commercial treaty1 the tax has lately been increased in part of ,germany1 in ,hungary1 ,switzerland1 and ,rumania4 ,the harvester companies feel that they have a substantial grievance against a government that allows them to be not only hazed and harried at home by tariffs on raw material1 but driven out of foreign markets as well4 ,the whole world is doing business on a single street to-day1 said one harvester maker2 but the trouble is that there are two hundred tariff toll-gates along that street4 ,in self-defence1 against these tariffs1 the ,international has been forced to build two foreign factories1 one in ,canada and one in ,sweden4 ,the ,swedish plant is a small affair as yet1 making rakes and mowers only2 but the ,canadian enterprise supports one-tenth of the city of ,hamilton1 and holds about half the ,canadian trade4 ,its worst vexation1 so far as ,i can tell from a hasty visit1 is a lack of ,canadian raw materials4 ,its chains1 bolts1 nuts1 and canvas aprons come from ,chicago1 its steel and coal from ,pittsburg1 and three-fourths of its lumber from the ,southern states4 ,the country that perhaps most disturbs the dreams of our harvester companies1 is as far as possible from being one of the great nations4 ,it is scarcely a country at all--only a scrap of coral reef uprisen at the foot of ,mexico--,yucatan4 ,yet this is the land on which the ,united ,states depends for binder twine4 ,manila fibre we can now get from our new co-,americans--the ,filipinos2 but there is never enough of it to supply the millions of self-binders4 ,only sisal-hemp yields abundantly enough4 ,and ,yucatan is the only spot in the world where sisal can be grown in commercial quantities4 ,yucatan is smaller than ,south ,carolina1 with not quite the population of ,milwaukee4 ,it was once the poorest of the ,central ,american states2 but since the arrival of the twine-binder it has become the richest4 ,it sells from fifteen to eighteen million dollars' worth of sisal a year1 and the ,united ,states buys it all4 ,three-fourths of this money is clear profit2 and it is an almost incredible fact that the forty ,sisal ,kings of ,yucatan have a larger net income than the owners of the immense ,international ,harvester ,company4 ,roughly speaking1 the ,american farmer pays ,yucatan #ab1jjj1jjj a year for string--mere string1 which is used once and then flung away4 ,it is an extortion and a waste1 besides being the only un-,american factor in the whole harvester business4 ,how can we save these twelve millions and completely ,americanise the trade8 ,this is a problem that ,william ,deering toiled at for twenty years4 ,the ,harvester ,company has a solution4 ,i saw it at ,st4 ,paul--a new factory1 which twists twine from flax4 ,a farmer's son named ,george ,h4 ,ellis has found a quick and cheap way to clean the flax fibre2 and at the time ,i visited the factory there were more than three hundred workers at the spindles4 ,two million pound of the twine were sold in #aijf1 so that the enterprise is no longer an experiment4 ,this means1 probably1 that the farmer of the future will grow his own twine4 ,instead of yielding tribute to the forty ,sisal ,kings of ,yucatan1 he will pay no more than the charges of the railroad and the factory4 ,the flax will be his own4 ,yucatan is the only cheap-labour country that has been enriched by the harvester4 ,elsewhere it is the rule that the common people of the nation must reach a certain high level before the harvester trade can begin4 ,where human labour has little value1 it is plainly not worth saving4 ,illustration3 ,,in ,,the ,,ancient ,,fields ,,of ,,algiers ,for this reason1 the harvester is the best barometer of civilisation4 ,it cannot go where slavery and barbarism exist4 ,it will not enter a land where the luxury of the city is built on the plunder of the men and women who work in the fields4 ,whoever operates a harvester must not only be intelligent3 he must be free4 ,to hundreds of millions of foreigners1 the ,united ,states is known as the country where the reapers come from4 ,they realise1 too1 that farm machinery represents our type of genius1 that it springs out of our national life1 and comes from us as inevitably as song comes from ,italy or silk from ,france4 ,why8 ,read the history of the ,united ,states4 ,this was the first country1 so far as we can know1 where men of high intelligence went to work en masse upon the soil1 and under such conditions as compelled them to develop a high degree of mechanical skill4 ,the pioneer ,american farmer had to be his own carpenter and blacksmith4 ,he had to build his own house and make his own harness4 ,consequently1 before this ,farmers' ,republic was two generations old1 the reaper was born in the little workshop behind the barn4 ,in the ,old ,world every occupation stood alone and aloof4 ,the mechanics knew nothing of the farm and the farmer knew nothing of the workshop4 ,every man to his trade1 said ,europe1 ,asia1 and ,africa4 ,but in the ,new ,world1 where trades and classes and nationalities were flung together in a heterogenous jumble1 there sprang up a race of handy1 inventive farmers1 set free from the habits and prejudices of their fathers4 ,they were the first body of men who were competent to solve the problem of farm machinery4 ,and so1 the ,american harvester is much more than a handy device for cutting grain4 ,it is the machine that makes democracy possible4 ,it reaches the average man1 and more--it pushes the ladder of prosperity down so far that even the farm labourer can grasp the lowest rung and climb4 ,it has become one of our national emblems4 ,it is as truly and as exclusively ,american as the ,stars and ,stripes or the ,declaration of ,independence4 ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,harvester ,,and ,,the ,,american ,,farmer ,if the ,american ,farmer went out of business this year he could clean up thirty thousand million dollars4 ,and he would have to sell his farm on credit2 for there is not enough money in the whole world to pay him half his price4 ,talk of the money-mad ,trusts6 ,they might have reason to be mad if they owned the farms1 instead of their watered stock4 ,when we remember that the ,american ,farmer earns enough in seventeen days to buy out ,standard ,oil1 and enough in fifty days to wipe ,carnegie and the ,steel ,trust off the industrial map1 the story of the trusts seems like the short and simple annals of the poor4 ,one ,american harvest would buy the kingdom of ,belgium1 king and all4 ,two would buy ,italy4 ,three would buy ,austria-,hungary4 ,and five1 at a spot cash price1 would take ,russia from the ,czar4 ,talk of swollen fortunes6 ,with the setting of every sun1 the money-box of the ,american ,farmer bulges with the weight of twenty-four new millions4 ,only the most athletic imagination can conceive of such a torrent of wealth4 ,place your finger on the pulse of your wrist and count the heart-beats2 one--two--three--four4 ,with every four of those quick throbs1 day and night1 a thousand dollars clatters into the gold-bin of the ,american ,farmer4 ,how incomprehensible it would seem to ,pericles1 who saw ,greece in her ,golden ,age1 if he could know that the yearly revenue of his country is now no more than one day's pay for the men who till the soil of this infant ,republic6 ,or1 how it would amaze a resurrected ,christopher ,columbus1 if he were told that the revenues of ,spain and ,portugal are not nearly as much as the earnings of the ,american ,farmer's ,hen6 ,merely the crumbs that drop from the ,farmer's table 7otherwise known as agricultural exports71 have brought him in enough of foreign money since #ahib1 so that he could1 if he wished1 settle the railway problem once for all1 by buying every foot of railroad in the ,united ,states4 ,such is our ,new ,farmer--a man for whom there is no name in any language4 ,he is as far above the farmer of the story-books1 as a #aijh touring-car is above a jinrikisha4 ,instead of being an ignorant hoe-man in a barn-yard world1 he gets the news by daily paper1 daily mail1 and telephone2 and incidentally publishes seven hundred trade journals of his own4 ,instead of being a moneyless peasant1 he pays the interest on the mortgage with the earnings of four days1 and his taxes with the earnings of a week4 ,even this is less of an expense than it seems1 for he borrows the money from himself1 out of his own banks1 and spends the bulk of the tax money around his own properties4 ,farming for a business1 not for a living--this is the motif of the ,new ,farmer4 ,he is a commercialist--a man of the twentieth century4 ,he works as hard as the ,old ,farmer did1 but in a higher way4 ,he uses the four ,m's--,mind1 ,money1 ,machinery and ,muscle2 but as little of the latter as possible4 ,neither is he a ,robinson ,crusoe of the soil1 as the ,old ,farmer was4 ,his hermit days are over2 he is a man among men4 ,the railway1 the trolley1 the automobile and the top buggy have transformed him into a suburbanite4 ,in fact1 his business has become so complex and many-sided1 that he touches civilisation at more points and lives a larger life than if he were one of the atoms of a crowded city4 ,all ,american farmers1 of course1 are not of the ,new variety4 ,the country1 like the city1 has its slums4 ,but after having made allowance for exceptions1 it is still true that the ,united ,states is the native land of the ,new ,farmer4 ,he is the most typical human product that this country has produced1 and the most important2 for1 in spite of its egotistical cities1 the ,united ,states is still a farm-based nation4 ,there could be no cloth-mills without the wool and cotton of the farm2 no sugar factories without beets2 no flour-mills without wheat2 no beef-packing industry without cattle4 ,the real business that is now swinging the whole nation ahead is not the ping-pong traffic of the ,stock ,exchanges1 but the steady output of twenty millions a day from the fields and barn-yards4 ,if this farm output were to be cut off1 the towering skyscrapers would fall and the gay palace-hotels would be as desolate as the temple of ,thebes4 ,the brain-working farmer is the man behind prosperity4 ,that is the ,big ,fact of recent ,american history4 ,it is he who pays the bills and holds up the national structure in the whirlwind hour of panic4 ,last year1 for instance1 while banks were tumbling1 the non-hysterical farmer was quietly gathering in a crop that was worth three times all the bank capital in the ,united ,states2 and since #aijb he and his soil have produced as much new wealth as would support ,uncle ,sam1 at his present rate of living1 for fifty years4 ,what was called ,mc,kinley ,prosperity was really created by the agricultural boom of #ahig4 ,there had been a general crop failure in ,europe1 and the price of wheat had soared above a dollar a bushel4 ,other nations paid us twelve hundred millions for farm products2 and this unparalleled inpouring of foreign money made us the richest and busiest nation in the world4 ,the supreme fact about the ,american ,farmer is that he has always been just as intelligent and important as anyone else in the ,republic4 ,he put fourteen of his sons in the ,white ,house2 and he did his full share of the working and fighting and thinking and inventing1 all the way down from ,george ,washington to ,james ,wilson4 ,he climbed up by self-help4 ,he got no rebates1 nor franchises1 nor subsidies4 ,the free land that was given him was worthless until he took it2 and he has all along been more hindered than helped by the meddling of public officials4 ,his best friend has been the maker of farm-machinery4 ,but this is a family matter4 ,four-fifths of the ,harvester ,kings were farmers' sons2 and the biggest harvester factory is only a development of the small workshop that always stood beside the barn4 ,there are no two men who are more closely linked together by the ties of blood and business than the farmer and the man who makes his labour-saving machines4 ,neither one can hurt the other without doing injury to himself4 ,the inventor of the modern plough1 ,jethro ,wood1 was a wealthy ,quaker farmer of ,new ,york--a man of such masterful intelligence as to count ,clay and ,webster among his friends4 ,the late ,james ,oliver1 and ,david ,bradley1 one of his greatest competitors1 were born and bred near the furrowed soil4 ,mc,cormick built his first reaper in a blacksmith shop on a farm4 ,so did ,john ,f4 ,sieberling1 ,william ,n4 ,whiteley1 ,lewis ,miller and ,c4 ,w4 ,marsh4 ,and the man who owned the first of the reaper factories1 ,dayton ,s4 ,morgan1 grew up amid the stumps of a ,new ,york farm4 ,the ,american ,farmer has always grown ideas1 as well as corn and potatoes4 ,that is the secret of his prosperity4 ,it was out in the wheat-fields where the idea of a self-binder flashed upon the brain of ,john ,f4 ,appleby2 where ,jacob ,miller learned to improve the thresher and ,george ,esterley to build the header and ,joseph ,f4 ,glidden to invent barb-wire4 ,before #ahej there was some progress among farmers1 but it was as slow as molasses in ,alaska4 ,they were free and independent1 and little else4 ,they had poor homes1 poor farms1 poor implements4 ,then came the gold-rush to ,california4 ,what this event did for farmers and the world can scarcely be exaggerated4 ,it opened up the prairies1 fed the hungry banks with money1 lured the farm labourers westward1 and compelled the farmers to use machinery4 ,three years later the ,crimean ,war sent the price of wheat soaring1 and the farmers had a jubilee of prosperity4 ,away went the log-cabin1 the ox-cart1 the grain-cradle1 and the flail4 ,in came the frame house1 the spring buggy1 the reaper1 and the thresher4 ,the farmers began to buy labour-saving devices4 ,better still1 they began to invent them4 ,there is one farm-bred man1 named ,r4 ,c4 ,haskins1 in the ,harvester ,building in ,chicago1 who1 in his thirty years of salesmanship1 has supervised the selling of #bge1jjj1jjj worth of harvesters to ,american farmers4 ,and as for the amount of money represented by our farm machinery of all kinds1 now in use1 it is very nearly a billion dollars--a total that no other nation can touch4 ,to measure ,american ,farmers by the census is now an outgrown method1 for the reason that each farmer works with the power of five men4 ,the farm has become a factory4 ,four-fifths of its work is done by machinery1 which explains how we can produce one-fifth of the wheat of the world1 half of the cotton1 and three-fourths of the corn1 although we are only six per cent4 of the human race4 ,the genie who built ,aladdin's palace in a night was the champion hustler of the fairy tale countries4 ,but he was not so tremendously superior to the farm labourer who takes a can of gasolene and cuts fifty cords of wood in a day1 or to the man who milks a herd of sixty cows in two hours1 by machinery4 ,to-day farming is not a drudgery4 ,rather it is a race--an exciting rivalry between the different ,states4 ,for years ,illinois and ,iowa have run neck and neck in the raising of corn and oats4 ,minnesota carries the blue ribbon for wheat1 with ,kansas breathless in second place4 ,california has shot to the front in the barley race4 ,texas and ,louisiana are tied in the production of rice4 ,kentucky is the tobacco champion2 and ,new ,york holds the record for hay and potatoes4 ,to see the ,new ,farmer at his best1 ,i went to ,iowa4 ,no other ,state has invested so much money--sixty millions--in labour-saving machinery1 so it can fairly claim to be the zenith of the farming world4 ,here there are twenty thousand women and three hundred thousand men who have made farming a profession4 ,they are producing wealth at the rate of five hundred millions a year1 nearly sixteen hundred dollars apiece4 ,how8 ,by throwing the burden of drudgery upon machines4 ,iowa is not so old2 she will be sixty-two1 this year4 ,she is not so large2 little ,england is larger4 ,yet1 with her hog-money she could pay the salaries of all the monarchs of ,europe2 and with one year's corn crop she could buy out the ,harvester ,trust1 or build three ,new ,york ,subways4 ,when the ,indians sold ,iowa to ,uncle ,sam they got about eight cents an acre4 ,to give the price exactly1 to a cent1 it was #b1hgg1edg4hg4 ,when this money was paid1 there were statesmen who protested that it was too much4 ,yet this amount was less than the ,iowans got for last year's colts2 it was less than one quarter of the value of the eggs in last years nests4 ,every three months1 the ,iowa hen pays for ,iowa4 ,through the courtesy of ,mr4 ,harlan1 of the ,des ,moines ,historical ,society1 ,i obtained the addresses of nine old settlers1 who went into ,iowa with ox-carts1 before #ahej1 and who are still living4 ,i found that every one of them had remained on the land and was prosperous4 ,the poorest owned #g1jjj1 the richest #if1jjj2 and their average wealth was #cf1jjj4 ,these fortunes are not made1 as in ,france1 by sacrificial economies4 ,the ,iowan is noted as a high liver and a good spender4 ,here1 for instance1 is the menu of a chance supper ,i enjoyed at the home of an ,iowa farmer1 nine miles from ,des ,moines3 ,mashed potatoes1 poached eggs1 hot biscuits1 white bread1 fresh butter1 honey1 jelly1 peaches and cream1 gooseberry pie1 and good coffee--all served on china1 with fine linen tablecloth and napkins4 ,the man of the house was the son of a rack-rented ,irish immigrant1 who had been reared on potatoes and salt1 mostly4 ,i found one young county1 born since the ,civil ,war1 in which five thousand farmers now own property worth seventy-five millions4 ,they have fourteen thousand horses1 seventeen thousand sheep1 sixty thousand cattle1 and ninety thousand hogs4 ,in the furnishing of the homes in this county1 so its ,auditor informs me1 more than twenty-five thousand dollars have been spent on the one item of pianos4 ,in a small1 out-of-the-way town1 called ,ames1 ,i came upon a farmers' college--a veritable ,harvard of the soil4 ,here1 on a thousand acres which fed the wild deer and buffalo in the days of ,andrew ,jackson1 is a college that equals ,princeton and ,vassar combined1 in the number of its pupils4 ,its farm machinery building is the largest of its kind4 ,five professors are in charge1 and it is a curious fact1 showing how new the ,new ,farmer is1 that these professors are obliged to teach without a text-book4 ,as yet1 there is no such thing in the world as a text-book on farm machinery4 ,the ,iowans pay half a million dollars a year to sustain this college4 ,they pay it cheerfully4 ,they pay it with a hurrah4 ,why8 ,because it is the biggest money-maker in the ,state4 ,one little professor1 named ,holden--the smallest of the whole hundred and forty1 is revered by the ,iowans as a ,king ,midas of the cornfield4 ,he has shown them how to grow ten bushels more per acre1 by using a better quality of seed4 ,this one idea1 in a ,state where every fourth dollar is a corn dollar1 meant an extra twenty millions last year4 ,first in corn1 first in farm machinery1 and first in the number of her banks6 ,that is ,iowa4 ,there are a few of her villages that have no banks1 but they are conscious of their disgrace4 ,they feel naked and ashamed4 ,in all1 there are as many banks as post-offices1 very nearly2 and they are crammed with enough wealth to build three ,panama ,canals4 ,money is a trifle tight just now1 said an ,iowa banker4 ,this was last ,september4 ,you see1 at this time of year1 the farm labourers cause a drain on the currency by keeping their wages in their pockets4 ,this surprising fact did not seem surprising to the banker4 ,he was himself bred on the soil--the son of a farm-hand who had become a rich farmer4 ,but to the financiers of ,europe1 what an incredible thing is this--that the wages of the farm-labourers should sway the money market up and down4 ,the pride of ,iowa is ,des ,moines1 a city of farm-bred people4 ,it is so young that some of its old men remember when wolf-hunting was good where its one skyscraper stands to-day4 ,it has no ancient history and no souvenirs4 ,a little while ago a lot of industrious people came here poor1 and now they are prosperous and still busy--that is the story of ,des ,moines in a sentence4 ,in the main hall of the five-domed ,capitol at ,des ,moines is a life-sized painting of a prairie wagon1 hauled by oxen4 ,in such a rude conveyance as this most of the early settlers rolled into ,iowa1 at a gait of two miles an hour4 ,but there are no prairie wagons now1 nor oxen4 ,ten thousand miles of railway criss-cross the ,state1 and make more profit in three months than all the railways of ancient ,india made last year4 ,instead of being tax-ridden serfs1 these ,iowans pay the total self-governing cost of their ,commonwealth by handing over the price of the summer's hay4 ,instead of being the prey of money-lenders1 they have made ,des ,moines the ,hartford of the ,west1 in which forty-two insurance companies carry a risk of half a billion4 ,and so1 in each one of its details1 the story of these ,corn ,kings is staggering to a mere city-dweller1 especially to anyone who has cold storage ideas about farmers4 ,big ,men1 too1 as well as big corn1 are grown in ,iowa4 ,here is a sample group--half educators and half statesmen--,john ,b4 ,grinnell1 ,henry ,smith ,williams1 ,albert ,shaw1 ,newell ,dwight ,hillis1 ,carl ,snyder1 ,emerson ,hough1 ,hamlin ,garland1 ,senators ,allison and ,dolliver1 ,leslie ,m4 ,shaw1 ,john ,a4 ,kasson1 ,horace ,boies1 ,governor ,albert ,b4 ,cummins and our ,official ,farmer--,james ,wilson4 ,there are now fifteen hundred newspaper men in ,iowa4 7,one of them ships seven carloads of magazines a month47 ,there are three hundred and fifty architects1 two thousand engineers1 five thousand doctors1 three thousand bankers and brokers1 and thirty thousand teachers4 ,these amazing changes have taken place within the memory of men and women who are now alive4 ,i can remember when the first mowing-machine was made in our county1 said ,governor ,cummins1 who is still far from being a man of years4 ,i walked eight miles through the forest and sold eggs for three cents a dozen and butter for four cents a pound1 said ,john ,cownie--a well-known figure at the ,des ,moines ,capitol4 ,one short half-century1 and here is the whole paraphernalia of a high civilisation--a fruitage which has usually required the long cultivation of a thousand years4 ,and ,iowa is not a freak ,state4 ,a traveller hears the same story--from ox-cart to automobile1 in almost every region of the prairie ,west4 ,the various ,states are only patches of one vast grassy plain where painted harvesters1 fleet after fleet1 ,like yachts1 career through seas of waving wheat4 ,my first experience with the ',new ,farmer1' as you call him1 was in ,texas1 said a ,kansas ,city business man4 ,i had taken an agency for harvesters in a section of ,texas that was bigger than several dozen ,vermonts1 and ,i made my headquarters in a town called ,amarillo4 ,the first morning ,i went into the bank to get acquainted4 ,while ,i was there in came a big1 roughly dressed man4 ',come here1 ,bill1' said the banker4 ',maybe you want some farm machinery4' ',maybe ,i do1' said the big fellow2 so ,i gave him a catalogue and went on talking with the banker4 ,ten minutes later the big fellow looked up from the catalogue and asked--',how much do you want for ten of these binders8' ,i nearly had a spell of heart failure1 but ,i gasped the price4 ,he said--'all right2 send 'em along4' ',don't you worry about ,bill's credit1' said the banker1 seeing ,i looked dazed4 ',he has more than #ajj1jjj in this bank right now4' ,this was my cue to get busy with the big farmer1 and before he left the bank he had bought a thresher1 four traction engines and half a dozen ploughs4 ,harvesting by machinery has actually become cheaper than the ancient method of harvesting by slaves4 ,this surprising fact was first brought to the notice of ,europeans during the ,chicago ,world's ,fair1 when forty-seven foreign ,commissioners were taken to the immense ,dalrymple farm in ,north ,dakota4 ,here they saw a wheat-field very nearly a hundred square miles in extent1 with three hundred self-binders clicking out the music of the harvest4 ,there were no serfs--no drudges--no barefooted women4 ,and yet they were told that the labour-cost of reaping the wheat was ,,less ,,than ,a ,,cent ,a ,,bushel4 ,it has now become impossible to reap the world's wheat by hand4 ,as well might we try to carry coal from mines to factories in baskets4 ,merely to have gathered in our own cereal and hay of last year's growing1 would have been a ten days' job for every man and woman in the ,united ,states1 between the ages of twenty and twenty-six4 ,but even if it had been possible to return to hand-labour1 in the production of the world's wheat1 the extra cost would have swollen1 last year1 to a total of #ccj1jjj1jjj--so ,i am told by a ,wisconsin professor who has made a careful study of the costs of harvesting4 ,this amount is more than equal to the entire revenue of the ,international ,harvester ,company1 in the five years of its existence4 ,roughly speaking1 the time needed to handle an acre of wheat has been reduced from sixty-one hours to three1 by the use of machinery4 ,hay now requires four hours1 instead of twenty-one2 oats seven hours1 instead of sixty-six2 and potatoes thirty-eight hours1 instead of one hundred and nine4 ,it is machinery that has so vastly increased the size of the average ,american farm4 ,in ,india1 where a farmer's whole outfit can be bought for ten dollars1 the average farm is half an acre or less4 ,in ,france and ,germany it is five acres4 ,in ,england it is nine4 ,but in the ,united ,states--the home of farm machinery1 it is one hundred and fifty acres4 ,very little has been written about this stupendous prosperity of ,american farmers4 ,why8 ,because it is so recent4 ,the ,era of ,big ,profits began barely ten years ago4 ,there was a time when the blue-ribbon ,new ,farmer was the man who grew wheat in the ,red ,river ,valley4 ,he was the aristocrat of the ,west4 ,his year's work was no more than a few weeks of ploughing and sowing1 and a few days of harvesting4 ,even this was done easily1 sitting on the seat of a machine and driving a team of splendid horses4 ,after harvest1 he cashed in1 carried a big cheque to the bank1 and settled down for a long loaf or a trip to the old homestead in the ,east4 ,but it was the bad year of #ahic that first put the farmers1 the country over1 on the road to affluence4 ,up to that time it was their usual policy to depend upon a single crop4 ,one farmer planted nothing but wheat2 another planted nothing but corn2 a third nothing but cotton2 and so on4 ,but in #ahic the prices of wheat1 corn1 and cotton fell so low that the farmers' profits were wiped out4 ,this disaster set the farmers thinking2 and in four years they had changed over to the new policy of ,diversified ,farming4 ,instead of putting all their work upon one crop1 they planted from three to a dozen different crops each year4 ,they manufactured their corn into cattle4 ,they gave the soil a square deal in the matter of fertilisation4 ,they learned to plant better seed and to pay attention to the ,weather ,bureau4 ,they studied the market reports4 ,and1 best of all1 they swung over from muscle to machinery1 until to-day the value of the machinery on ,american farms is fully a thousand millions4 ,all this amazing progress that ,i have been describing is by no means the best that the ,new ,farmer will do4 ,it is merely what he has done by the aid of machinery4 ,what he will do by the aid of ,,science remains to be seen4 ,scientific agriculture is young4 ,it has had to wait until machinery prepared the way1 by giving the farmers time to think1 and money to spend4 ,the first scientist who took notice of farming was the ,frenchman1 ,lavoisier4 ,he found out the composition of water in #aghc1 and was in the midst of many discoveries1 when a ,paris mob hustled him to the guillotine4 ,the famous ,liebig next appeared and founded the first agricultural experiment station4 ,then came ,berthelot--the father of synthetic chemistry1 with his sensational announcement--,the soil is alive4 ,to-day the ,new ,farmer finds himself touched by ,science on all sides4 ,he knows that there are more living things in one pinch of rich soil than there are people on the whole globe4 ,he knows that he can take half a dozen handfuls of earth from different parts of his farm1 mix them together1 send one thimbleful to a chemist1 and find out exactly the kind of crop that will give him the best harvest4 ,and more1 now that science has given him a peep into ,nature's factory1 he can even feel a sense of kinship between himself and his acres1 because he knows that the same elements that redden his blood are painting the green hues on his fields and forests4 ,there are now fifteen thousand ,new ,farmers who have graduated from agricultural colleges2 and since the late ,professor ,w4 ,c4 ,atwater opened the first ,american experiment station in #ahge1 fifty others have sprung into vigorous life4 ,there is also at ,washington an ,agricultural ,department which has become the greatest aggregation of farm-scientists in the world4 ,to maintain this ,department ,uncle ,sam pays grudgingly eleven millions a year4 ,he pays much more than this to give food and blankets to a horde of lazy ,indians1 or for the building of two or three warships4 ,but it is at least more than is being spent on the ,new ,farmer in any other country4 ,step by step farming is becoming a sure and scientific profession4 ,the risks and uncertainties that formerly tossed the farmer back and forth1 between hope and despair1 are being mastered4 ,the ,weather ,bureau1 which sent half a million warnings last year to the farmers1 has already become so skilful that six-sevenths of its predictions come true4 ,in ,kansas1 wheat-growing has become so sure that there has been no failure for thirteen years4 ,and in the vast ,south-,west1 the trick of irrigation is changing the man-killing desert into a ,farmers' paradise1 where there is nothing so punctual as the crops4 ,already gasolene engines are in use among the ,new ,farmers4 ,the ,international ,harvester ,company made twenty-five thousand of them last year at ,milwaukee1 without supplying the demand4 ,these engines1 in the near future1 will be operated with alcohol1 which the farmers can distil from potatoes at a cost of ten cents a gallon4 ,this is no dream1 as there are now six thousand alcohol engines in use on the farms of ,germany alone4 ,when this ,age of ,alcohol arrives1 the making of the ,new ,farmer will be very nearly complete4 ,he will then grow his own power1 and know how to harness for his own use the omnipotence of the soil4 99 99 99 99 99 ,transcriber's note3 ,text in italics is enclosed by underscores 7italics74 ,on page #ca1 the figure #a1cjj1jj is presented as in the original4 ,on page #ajf1 the image of a triangle has been replaced with triangle4 ,the following misprints have been corrected3 ,doubelday corrected to ,doubleday 7title page7 ,bejamin corrected to ,benjamin 7page #fg7 consistingly corrected to consisting 7page #gd7 ,mc,cormich corrected to ,mc,cormick 7page #ajb7 eet corrected to ,meet 7page #aca7 ,other than the corrections listed above1 inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained4 ,punctuation has been corrected without note4