machines now rip the husks off the ears. Horse hay-forks and
horse hayrakes have supplanted manual labor. The mere names of scores
of modern instruments of farming, all unknown in Civil War days--hay
carriers, hay loaders, hay stackers, manure spreaders, horse corn
planters, corn drills, disk harrows, disk ploughs, steam ploughs,
tractors, and the like--give some suggestion of the extent to which
America has made mechanical the most ancient of occupations. In thus
transforming agriculture, we have developed not only our own Western
plains, but we have created new countries. Argentina could hardly exist
today except for American agricultural machinery. Ex-President Loubet
declared, a few years ago, that France would starve to death except
for the farming machines that were turned out in Chicago. There is
practically no part of the world where our self-binders are not used. In
many places America is not known as the land of freedom and opportunity,
but merely as "the place from which the reapers come." The traveler
suddenly comes upon these familiar agents in every European country,
in South America, in Egypt, China, Algiers, Siberia, India, Burma, and
Australia. For agricultural machinery remains today, what it has always
been, almost exclusively an American manufacture. It is practically the
only native American product that our European competitors have not
been able to imitate. Tariff walls, bounty systems, and all the other
artificial aids to manufacturing have not developed this industry in
foreign lands, and today the United States produces four-fifths of
all the agricultural machinery used in the world. The International
Harvester Company has its salesmen in more than fifty countries, and has
established large American factories in many nations of Europe.

One day, a few years before his death, Prince Bismarck was driving on
his estate, closely following a self-binder that had recently been put
to work. The venerable statesman, bent and feeble, seemed to find a deep
melancholy interest in the operation.

"Show me the thing that ties the knot," he said. It was taken to pieces
and explained to him in detail. "Can these machines be made in Germany?"
he asked.

"No, your Excellency," came the reply. "They can be made only in
America."

The old man gave a sigh. "Those Yankees are ingenious fellows," he said.
"This is a wonderful machine."

In this story of American success, four names stand out preeminently.
The