formation of the big Chicago company, every foreign nation
is being reached and taught to throw away its reaping-hooks and to cut its
grain in a civilised way. There is now practically no great city anywhere
in which a farmer cannot buy one of the handsome red harvesters that have
done so much to give a "full dinner-pail" to the civilized nations.

"The world is mine oyster," says the International Harvester Company. In
the first five years of its career, it has sent to foreign countries
920,000 harvesters of all sorts, for which it has been paid $70,000,000.
It has doubled its foreign sales and now makes two-third of the harvesters
of the world.

What with the profits, and the big orders, and the medals, and the
appreciation of monarchs, the Harvester men have found their foreign trade
from the first a business _de luxe_. In fact, one of the principal
reasons why they quit fighting was that they might handle this world
commerce in an organised way.

To-day they are not battling with one another on the royal farms of
Europe, like gladiators who make sport for emperors. There is more
business and less adventure. They have a geography of their own, and have
divided the whole world into eight provinces. The "Domestic" Department of
the International comprises the United States and Canada and is managed
from Chicago. Central Europe, with Russia and Siberia, has its
headquarters at Hamburg; Western Europe and Northern Africa are handled
from Paris; Great Britain is directed from London; South America from
Buenos Ayres; Australia from Melbourne; New Zealand from Christchurch; and
Mexico from Mexico City. Such is the commercial empire that has its seat
at the foot of Lake Michigan.

Other countries can sell us automobiles and bric-a-brac. They may even get
over our tariff wall with hay and cotton and steel and lumber. But they
have never dared to try to sell us farm machinery. Every harvester in
the United States was made at home.

[Illustration: GATHERING IN A FINLAND HARVEST]

Either one of the two immense harvester plants of Chicago is larger than
the combined plants of England, Germany, and France. France, recently,
made a brilliant dash toward success in the harvester business. M.
Racquet, a journalist, built a great factory at Amiens. He bought the best
American machinery. He allied himself with a savings bank and sold stock
to the farmers. He was protected by a high tariff. But, alas for his
eloquent prospectu