The gallantry of that primitive pioneer life kept her in the cabin, which was the castle, and, while her labor was doubtless not less than her husband's, it had the sanctity of its seclusion and its maternal ministries to life. In the new industrialism that has invited the daughters of the Polish women harvesters into the factories yonder there is this constant and increasing concern which is insisting upon a living wage, wholesome sanitary environment, and on shorter hours of labor for women and children--this purpose that will ultimately bring skies and sunsets without exposure or back-breaking labor. On my way to a provincial university in the north of France not long ago, I saw a peasant mother standing in the misty morning at the mouth of a small thresher, feeding into it the sheaves handed her by her husband, the horse in a treadmill furnishing the power. When I passed in the misty morning of the next day she was still feeding the yellow sheaves into the thresher; and I thought how much better that was than the flail. On a farm in the northwest, a hundred miles square, as long ago as 1893, three hundred self-binders were reaping the wheat at the cost of less than a cent a bushel--with practically no human labor beyond driving, [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Romance of the Reaper," p. 178.] and there are seven thousand harvesting machines made each week [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Cyrus Hall McCormick," p. 196.] by the one great harvester company alone. The time needed to handle an acre of wheat has been reduced by the use of machinery from sixty-one hours to three; of an acre of hay from twenty-one to four; of oats from sixty-six to seven; of potatoes from one hundred and nine to thirty-eight--which is significant in its promise of the wisdoms of leisure. [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Romance of the Reaper," p. 179.] But machinery has also increased the size of the farm. In France and Germany, I am told, the average farm is but five acres in size, and in England nine; while in the United States it is one hundred and thirty- eight acres, and in the States west of the Mississippi two hundred and eleven acres. And the product? One harvest, in the picturesque words of Mr. Casson, would buy Belgium, two would buy Italy, three would buy Austria-Hungary, and five, at a spot-cash price, would take Russia from the Czar. Seven bushels of wheat for every man, woman, and child of the ninety or more millions in America and a thousand million dollars' worth of food to other nations! That is the sum of the product--of what has been led forth in a single year.