mpetitors, too--very active and able ones. Binders
are made by 4 large independent companies, mowers by 17, corn-shredders by
18, twine by 26, wagons by 116, and gasolene engines by 124. Of the
thirty-seven different machines made by the International there are only
three--hemp-reapers, corn-shockers, and rice-binders--that are made by no
other company, and even these machines are not protected by any basic
patents. Powerful as the International is, it is still far from the place
where business is one long sweet dream of monopoly.

The four independent companies that make binders seem to have no fear of
the "Trust." "We have no fault to find with it," said President Atwater,
of the Johnson Company. "We don't want it smashed. Why? Because our
business has doubled since it was organised; and because we would sooner
compete with one company than with a dozen."

"The 'Trust' was the only thing that saved the whole harvester business
from annihilation," said the ex-president of another independent company,
when I pressed him for his personal opinion, and promised not to use his
name. "The cold fact is really this," he added, "that the International
Harvester Company has bettered conditions for the farmer, for the
independent companies, and for everybody but itself."

"The big combine has never misused its power," said a third of the
International's competitors. "Now and then its agents make trouble, just
as ours do, no doubt. But the men at the top have always given us a square
deal."

So it is my duty to state that on the whole the Harvester Combine is a
good combination and not a bad one. I have found it radically different
from the get-rich-quick trusts that have been described in recent books
and magazine articles. It is not a monopoly. It is an advocate of free
trade. Its stock is not watered, nor for sale in Wall Street. And the men
at the top are very evidently plain, hard-working, simple-living American
citizens, who are quite content to do business in a live-and-let-live way.

They are not thoroughly reconciled, even yet, to being a merger. They
look back with open regret to the wasteful but adventurous days of
competition. Of the combination the elder Mrs. Cyrus McCormick finely
said:

"It was a hurt of the heart. Each of our companies was like a family. Each
had a body of loyal agents, who had been comrades through many struggles.
But the terrible increase in expenses compelled us to subdue our feelings
and