to cooperate with one another."

"I am not a merger man myself," said William Deering, "although I believe
that the International Harvester Company has been a benefit to the
farmers."

Cyrus H. McCormick goes still further. He is a "trust-buster" himself, so
far as the over-capitalised and oppressive leviathans of business are
concerned. He said to me frankly: "Some of the hostility to our company is
inspired by worthy motives, growing out of the general opposition to the
so-called trusts." And when a North Dakota congressman proposed in 1904
that the International Harvester Company should be investigated, Cyrus
McCormick at once sent a message that amazed the Bureau of
Corporations--"Please come and investigate us," he said. "If we're not
right, we want to get right."

"Yes," said one of the highest officials of the Roosevelt administration,
when I asked him to corroborate this very remarkable story. "It is true
that from 1904 it has been the continued desire of the International
Harvester Company that we should investigate them. In fact, during the
last year (1907) they have urged us with considerable earnestness to make
this investigation."

So, this big business has evolved from simple to complex in accordance
with the same laws that rule plants and empires. It has probably not yet
reached its full maturity, for it is greater than any man or any form of
organisation, and the tiny ephemeral atoms who control it to-day are no
more than its most obedient retinue. They come and go--quarrel and make
friends--live and die. What matter? The big business, once alive, grows on
through the short centuries, from generation to generation.

And what does it all mean--this federation of thirteen factory
cities--this coordination of muscle and mind and millions--this arduous
development of a new art, whereby a group of mechanics can take a
wagon-load of iron ore and a tree, and fashion them into a shapely
automaton that has the power of a dozen farmers?

_It means bread. It means hunger-insurance for the whole human race. As we
shall see in the next chapter, it means that the famine problem has been
solved, not only for the United States, but for all the civilised nations
of the world._

CHAPTER IV

THE AMERICAN HARVESTER ABROAD

The first American reapers that went to Europe were given a royal welcome.
There were two of them--one made by McCormick and one made by Hussey, and
they were exhibited before Albert Ed