an the value of one corn crop
in Iowa, or half as much as the Iowa farmers have now on deposit in their
savings banks. It is very little more than Russell Sage raked in through
the wickets of his little money-lending office, or than Marshall Field
accumulated from a single store. In fact, if bread were raised one cent a
loaf for one year in the United States alone, the extra pennies would buy
out the whole "Harvester Trust," bag and baggage.

The bulk of the farmers, so far as I could harmonise their opinions, are
now too well accustomed to big enterprises among themselves to be scared
by the Chicago merger. They have at the present time more than five
thousand cooperative companies of their own. And some of these are of
national importance; as, for instance, the powerful Cotton Growers' Trust,
and the Farmers' Business Congress, which owns 800 elevators for the
storage of grain.

"My only objection to the International Harvester Company," said a
business man in St. Paul, "is that it sells its machinery cheaper in
Europe than it does in the United States." I investigated this charge, and
found it wholly incorrect. 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 ago. But there is a quite credible reason for
this rumour. It is simply this--that for some less progressive countries a
crude, old-fashioned reaper is being made, to sell for $45. The modern,
self-rake reaper is too complex for the simple mind of many a Russian
farmer, so he is supplied with a clumsy machine which is $15 cheaper, but
which looked, to my unskilled eye, more than $30 worse.

No one accuses the "Trust" of having unreasonably raised prices. On the
contrary, it is generally given full credit for holding prices down, in
spite of the fact that it is paying from twenty to eighty per cent. more
for its labour and raw materials than was paid in 1902. Generally
speaking, all farm implements except thrashing-machines are cheaper now
than they were in 1880, when the competition was most strenuous. Binders
have dropped from $325 to $125; hay-rakes from $25 to $16; and mowers from
$80 to $45.

"I paid $200 for a self-binding harvester twenty-five years ago," said a
Kansas farmer. "Ten years later I bought another for $140 and in 1907 I
bought one from the International for $125, which is in my judgment the
best of the three machines."

The International has co