So, it is evident that the McCormick Reaper has been an indispensable factor in the making of America. Without it, we could never have had the America of to-day. It has brought good, and nothing but good, to every country that has accepted it. It has never been, and never can be, put to an evil use. It cannot, under any system of government, benefit the few and not the many. It is as democratic in its nature as the American Constitution; and in every foreign country where it cuts the grain, it is an educator as well as a machine, giving to the masses of less fortunate lands an object-lesson in democracy and the spirit of American progress. CHAPTER XII THE REAPER AND THE WORLD We shall now see what the invention of the Reaper means to the human race as a whole. We shall leave behind McCormick and the United States, and survey the field from a higher standpoint. The selection of wheat as the first world-food,--its abundance made possible by the Reaper--its transportation by railroads and steamships--its storage in elevators--the production of flour--the growth of wheat-banks, wheat-ports, and exchanges--the new wheat empires--the international mechanism of marketing--the conquest of famine and the stupendous possibilities of the future! These are the subjects that group themselves under the general title--_The Reaper and the World_. To find a world-food,--that was the beginning of the problem. All human beings wake up hungry every morning of their lives; and consequently the first necessity of the day is food. The search for food is the oldest of instincts. It is the master-motive of evolution. It has reared empires up and thrown them down. As Buckle has shown, where the national food is cheap and plentiful, population increases more rapidly. And as Sir James Crichton-Browne, in a recent book on "Parcimony in Nutrition," maintains, the lack of food is a prolific cause of war, disease, and social misery in its various forms. "Nothing is more demoralizing," he says, "than chronic hunger." "For lack of bread the French Revolution failed," said Prince Krapotkin. For lack of bread the opium traffic flourishes in India and China; the secret of the prevalence of opium is that the natives use it to prevent hunger-pangs in time of famine. Once let those countries have cheap bread, and there may be no more opium sold there than there is to-day in Kansas. For lack of bread came the war between Russia and Japan; what the one nation wanted was a seaport for the grain of Siberia, and what the other wanted was more land for the support of her swarming population. For lack of bread have come most of the crimes of greed and violence,--most of the social systems based on sordid self-interest, most of the ill-humor that has postponed the coming of an era of peace on earth and good-will among men.