ar by a penalising tariff. Australia
has made it a political issue. Germany takes a toll of $11 on every
self-binder, and Austria takes $25. Roumania raised the duty on harvesters
several months ago; and there is a general feeling that the time has come
to check the supremacy that the United States has always had in this line.

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 lawbreaker.
The "crime" of which it was declared guilty, was the maintenance of the
old practice of "exclusive contracts," which has been the almost universal
custom for fifty years. Each agent was pledged not to sell any other
company's goods. _The International abolished this requirement two years
ago, and several of the independent companies still retain it._ Until the
merger was organised it was regarded as fair enough. It is one of the most
usual habits of agency business. 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 life.

Many of the old methods of the rough-and-tumble days have survived. It is
not possible to say "Presto, change!" to 40,000 battling agents, so that
they shall at once begin to play fair and cooperate. But the general
opinion is that the Combine has raised the harvester business to a higher
level. At one of its branch offices I came accidentally upon a letter
written by Cyrus H. McCormick, in which he forbade the taking of rebates
from railways.

"You must clearly understand," he wrote, "that this company will maintain
a policy of absolute obedience to the law."

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 mind, and which even the great-brained Webster had
when he opposed the annexation of Texas and California. Of four farm
editors, one was against all "trusts" on general principles; and the other
three believed that the evils of harvester competition were much greater
than those of consolidation. The bare fact that this one corporation has
$120,000,000 of capital alarms the old-timers. Others have become more
accustomed to the Big Facts of American business.

"Why," said one implement dealer, "after all, $120,000,000 is less than
the American farmers earn in a week."

He might also have said that it was less th