a stupendous kindergarten. As an example
of the rapidity with which they are sometimes able to teach, take the
Philippines. Nine years ago the Filipinos spent nothing whatever for
farming machinery; in 1905 they bought $90,000 worth. Even yet, however,
they do not raise enough rice to feed themselves; and although half of
them are farmers, only one-twentieth of their land is cultivated.

[Illustration: BISMARCK HAVING HIS FIRST VIEW OF AN AMERICAN SELF-BINDER]

"Many of our agents are now living in Siberia with their families," said
C. S. Funk, the General Manager of the International. "They are teaching
the mujiks to grow wheat and harvest it. We have similar missionaries in
South Africa and South America and most of the countries of the world.
Some of them have gone as far as water and rail would carry them, and have
then crossed the mountains with their machinery on the backs of mules, so
that they might teach the natives how to farm on the American plan. All
told, we have more than a thousand such missionaries in foreign
countries."

In Chicago, I met two of the leaders who are in control of this army of
teachers. One was a strong-faced young Illinoisan named Couchman, who
handles several nations from Hamburg; and the other was a courteous
commercial diplomat named La Porte, who supervises France, Spain, Italy,
and Northern Africa from his office in Paris. Each is in charge of several
hundred American mechanics, who are exiled from home for the sake of our
harvester trade.

No renown comes to these men. No medals are pinned upon their coats. They
are only one regiment in the great pay-envelope army of American
mechanics. But they are on the firing-line of the greatest battle against
ignorance and famine that has ever been fought. They are the pioneers of
the new farmer. To show the world's peasantry how to work with brains and
machinery, to bring them up to the American farmer's level--that is their
task. What could be more essentially American, or more profitable to the
human race?

Many European farmers, of course, are easily up to the Kansas level; but
the vast majority have been mistaught that the path of the farmer must
forever be watered with sweat. Many of them are so cramped by the shackles
of drudgery that they cannot even conceive of the value of leisure.

"Why don't you use a scythe? Then you could cut twice as much," said
Horace Greeley, who was deeply interested in farm machinery and
agricult