The reaper has done more to chase the wolf from the door--to abolish poverty and drudgery and hand-labour, than any other invention of our day. It has done good without any backwash of evil. It has not developed any new species of social parasite, as so many modern improvements have done. It has not added one dollar to the unclean hoard of a stock-gambler, nor turned loose upon the public a single idle millionaire. The reaper is our best guarantee of prosperity. In spite of our periodical panics, which prove, by the way, that the men who provide us with banks are not as efficient as the men who provide us with bread, we are certain to rebound into prosperity and social progress as long as we continue to make three hundred harvesting machines every working day--one every two minutes. The rising flood of wheat is bound to submerge the schemers and the pessimists alike. And it is the reaper, too, which has done most to make possible a nobler human race, by lessening the power of that ancient motive--the Search for Food. Every harvester that clicks its way through the yellow grain means more than bread. It means more comfort, more travel, more art and music, more books and education. In this large fact lies the real Romance of the Reaper. In gathering the material for this book I have been greatly assisted by Messrs. E. J. Baker, of the _Farm Implement News_; B. B. Clarke, of the _American Thresherman_; Ralph Emerson, of Rockford, Ill; C. W. Marsh, of De Kalb, Ill.; Edwin D. Metcalf and T. M. Osborne, of Auburn, N. Y., Henry Wallace, of _Wallace's Farmer_, William N. Whiteley, of Springfield, Ohio; and the officials of the International Harvester Company, who made it possible for me to have free access to all of its works and to familiarise myself with its manner of doing business in this country and abroad. Also, I take pleasure in reproducing the following editorial note from _Everybody's Magazine_, in which four chapters of this book were first printed: