The children born and bred in this Red River Valley have never seen, except in pictures, a sickle or a flail. Their only conception of a harvest time is that a battery of red self-binders, with reels whirling and knives clacking, shall charge upon the wheat as though each acre were a battalion of hostile infantry, and make war until the land is strewn with heaps of fallen sheaves. Famine, to these children of the wheat, seems as remote a danger as the cooling of the sun. Even the one young State of North Dakota, not yet of age, is now growing food for herself, and for twelve million people besides. So, the urgent world-problem is to teach other nations the lesson of the Red River Valley. There is not yet enough bread so that we may put a loaf at every plate. To feed the whole race according to the present American standard of living would require ten thousand million bushels--three times as much as we are raising now; and the demand is fast outgrowing the supply. Sooner or later the Chinese will learn to eat at least one loaf a week apiece, and when they do, it will mean that the world's wheat crop must be increased ten per cent. More wheat and a more efficient organization of wheat agencies--that is the programme of the future. Already one unsuccessful effort has been made to hold an international Wheat Congress; and the second attempt may end more happily. Now that the world has become so small that a cablegram flashes completely around it in twelve minutes; now that there are forty-four nations united by The Hague Conferences and fifty-eight by the Postal Union; now that war has grown to be so expensive that one cannon-shot costs as much as a college education and one battleship as much as a first-class University,--it is quite probable that the march of co-operation will continue until there is a Congress, and a central headquarters and a Tribunal, which will represent nothing less than an international fellowship of the wheat. CHAPTER XIII GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD We have now seen the machinery by which the wheat is cut, moved, stored, financed, and marketed. Its next and last step, as wheat, is to the Flour-mill, whence it goes to the bakeries, the groceries, and the homes of six hundred million people. Here, too, there have had to come new methods since the advent of the Reaper.