J. J. Glessner 92 W. H. Jones 92 James Deering 92 American self-binders on the estate of President Fallières, in France 135 King Alphonso of Spain driving an American seeder 138 Bismarck having his first view of an American self-binder 147 An American harvester at work in Argentina 151 Gathering in a Finland harvest 154 In the ancient fields of Algiers 158 The Romance of the Reaper The Romance of the Reaper CHAPTER I THE STORY OF MCCORMICK This Romance of the Reaper is a true fairy tale of American life--the story of the magicians who have taught the civilised world to gather in its harvests by machinery. On the old European plan--snip--snip--snipping with a tiny hand-sickle, every bushel of wheat required three hours of a man's lifetime. To-day, on the new American plan--riding on the painted chariot of a self-binding harvester, the price of wheat has been cut down to _ten minutes a bushel_. "When I first went into the harvest field," so an Illinois farmer told me, "it took ten men to cut and bind my grain. Now our hired girl gets on the seat of a self-binder and does the whole business." This magical machinery of the wheat-field solves the mystery of prosperity. It explains the New Farmer and the miracles of scientific agriculture. It accounts for the growth of great cities with their steel mills and factories. And it makes clear how we in the United States have become the best fed nation in the world. Hard as it may be for this twentieth century generation to believe, it is true that until recently the main object of all nations was to get bread. Life was a Search for Food--a desperate postponement of famine. Cut the Kings and their retinues out of history and it is no exaggeration to say that the human race was hungry for ten thousand years. Even of the Black Bread--burnt and dirty and coarse, there was not enough; and the few who were well fed took the food from the mouths of slaves. Even the nations that grew Galileo and Laplace and Newton were haunted by the ghosts of Hunger. Merrie England was famine-swept in 1315, 1321, 1369, 1438, 1482, 1527, 1630, 1661, and 1709. To have enough to eat, was to the masses of all nations a dream--a Millennium of Prosperity. This long Age of Hunger outlived the great nations of antiquity. Why? Because they went at the problem of progress in the wrong way. If Marcus Aurelius had invented the reaper, or if the Gracchi had been inventors instead of politicians, the story of Rome would have had a happier ending. But Rome said: The first thing is empire. Egypt said: The first thing is fame. Greece said: The first thing is genius. Not one of them said: The first thing is _Bread_.