ce that time. I
have four of those machines now, and I want to say to you that they are
the most useful articles that come to us from the United States. I am
stating no more than the simple truth when I tell you that without
American harvesters, France would starve."

In still other countries the American reaper has been popular with kings
and potentates. The Sultan of Turkey and the Shah of Persia each bought
one during the Chicago World's Fair. And the young King of Spain, who
ordered a mower in 1903, narrowly escaped being minced up by its knives.
Being an impulsive youth, he gave a cry of joy at sight of the handsome
machine, sprang upon the seat, and lashed the horses without first laying
hold of the reins. The horses leaped, and the seventeen-year-old Alphonso
went sprawling. Twenty workmen ran to his help, and one level-headed
American mechanic caught the reins; so the worst penalty that the boy king
had to pay for his recklessness was a tumble and a bad scare.

In Russia, the Czar and the grand dukes at first bought reapers partly as
toys and partly as strike-breakers. If the labourers on their estates
demanded more pay than fifty cents a week, the manager would drive them in
a body to his barn, then throw open the doors and show them five or six
red harvesters.

"Do you see these American machines?" he would say. "Unless you go back to
work at the same wages, I will reap the grain with these machines, and
you will have no work at all, and no money." A look at these
machine-devils has usually sent the cowed serfs back to their sickles. But
here and there it has set them to wondering whether or not a
fifty-cent-a-week job was worth having, and so has given them an A B C
lesson in American doctrines.

[Illustration: KING ALPHONSO OF SPAIN DRIVING AN AMERICAN SEEDER]

Many of the Russian nobility, too, have begun to learn a trifle about
democracy from the American harvester agents. There is a certain young
baron, for example, whose estate is not far from Riga. Last year, to be in
fashion, he bought a Chicago self-binder. When it arrived, there came with
it, as usual, an expert mechanic to set it up and start it in the field.
In this case, the mechanic was a big German-American named Lutfring, born
in Wisconsin, of "Forty Eighter" stock.

The baron was evidently impressed by the manly and dignified bearing of
Lutfring, who stood erect while the native workmen were bowing and
cringing in obeisance. And when