s lately
spent twice as much merely to improve one twine factory in St. Paul, and
four times as much to build one warehouse in Chicago. Though it began its
career with sixty million dollars' worth of equipment, it has been forced
by the pressure of its trade to spend sixteen millions more on its
factories. And for lack of a weather prophet, it is obliged to carry over
from five to six million dollars worth of machines each year, which remain
unsold in different countries.

By its very nature, this industry cannot be carried on in a small way. It
is as essentially mutual and cooperative as life insurance or banking. If
a malicious "green bug" devours the wheat in Kansas, the loss must be made
up by larger sales somewhere else. This, no doubt, is the main reason why
every plant that was ever built to supply a local trade has failed.

No other manufacturing business carries so many risks or includes so many
factors. It is the most comprehensive industry in the world. It is the
link between the city and the farm. It is both wholesale and retail,
ready-made and made to order, local and international. It must make what
the farmer demands, and yet teach him better methods. It is at once a
factory, a bank and a university.

Thus, of necessity, the Harvester Company represents in the highest degree
the new American way of manufacturing: everything on a large scale,
elaborate machinery, unskilled workmen, and a vast surplus to drive it
past failures and misfortunes. From its ore mines in the Mesaba Range,
where I saw a steam-shovel heap a fifty ton railroad car in ten swings, to
the lumber yard of the McCormick Works, where 26,000,000 feet of hardwood
are seasoning in the sooty rays of the Chicago sun, it was a panorama of
big production.

"How many castings did your men make last year?" I asked of the hustling
Irish-American who rules over one of the McCormick foundries.

"Very nearly 44,000,000, sir," he replied. "And the gray iron foundry over
there uses three times as much iron as we do, and it made more than
12,000,000."

Fifty-six million castings! Merely to count these would take the whole
Minnesota Legislature sixteen days, even though every member worked eight
hours a day and counted sixty castings a minute. Far, far behind are the
simple, old-fashioned days, when a reaping tool was made of two
pieces--the handle and the blade. There are now 300 parts in a
horse-rake, 600 in a mower, 3,800 in a binder.

When McCo