oes the whole business."

This magical machinery of the wheat-field solves the mystery of
prosperity. It explains the New Farmer and the miracles of scientific
agriculture. It accounts for the growth of great cities with their steel
mills and factories. And it makes clear how we in the United States have
become the best fed nation in the world.

Hard as it may be for this twentieth century generation to believe, it is
true that until recently the main object of all nations was to get bread.
Life was a Search for Food--a desperate postponement of famine.

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 years. Even of the
Black Bread--burnt and dirty and coarse, there was not enough; and the few
who were well fed took the food from the mouths of slaves. Even the
nations that grew Galileo and Laplace and Newton were haunted by the
ghosts of Hunger. Merrie England was famine-swept in 1315, 1321, 1369,
1438, 1482, 1527, 1630, 1661, and 1709. To have enough to eat, was to the
masses of all nations a dream--a Millennium of Prosperity.

This long Age of Hunger outlived the great nations of antiquity. Why?
Because they went at the problem of progress in the wrong way.

If Marcus Aurelius had invented the reaper, or if the Gracchi had been
inventors instead of politicians, the story of Rome would have had a
happier ending. But Rome said: The first thing is empire. Egypt said: The
first thing is fame. Greece said: The first thing is genius. Not one of
them said: The first thing is _Bread_.

In the Egyptian quarter of the British Museum, standing humbly in a glass
case between two mummied Pharaohs, is a little group of farm utensils. A
fractured wooden plough, a rusted sickle, two sticks tied together with a
leathern thong, and several tassels that had hung on the horns of the
oxen. A rummaging professor found these in the tomb of Seti I., who had
his will on the banks of the Nile three thousand years ago. Egypt had a
most elaborate government at that time. She had an army and navy, an art
and literature. Yet her bread-tools were no better than those of the
barbarians whom she despised.

It is one of the most baffling mysteries of history, that agriculture--the
first industry to be learned, was the last one to be developed. For
thousands of years the wise men of the world absolutely ignored the
problems of the farm. A farmer remained either a ser