In the paint shop the man with the brush has been superseded--a case of downright trade suicide. In his place is an unskilled Hungarian with a big tank of paint. Souse! Into the tank goes the whole frame of a binder, and the swarthy descendant of Attilla thinks himself slow if he dips less than four hundred of these in a day. The labour-cost of painting wheels is now one-fifth of a cent each. Ten at once, on a wooden axle, are swung into the paint bath without the touch of a finger. And the few belated brush-men who are left work with frantic haste, knowing that they, too, are being pursued by a machine that will overtake them some day. In the central bookkeeping office of the Harvester Company I found some almost incredible statistics. Here, for instance, are a few of the items in last year's bill of expenses: Two hundred and thirty-five miles of leather belting, 940 miles of cotton duck, 2,000 grindstones, 3,000 shovels, 10,000 brooms, 1,670,000 buckles, 1,185,000 pounds paint, 4,000,000 pounds wire, 15,000,000 pounds nails. Merely to maintain its experimental department costs this imperial company $7,000 a week. Here are more than two hundred inventors and designers, well housed and well salaried, and not tramping from shop to shop, as inventors did in the good old days. They are paid to think; and the company is mightily proud of them. But the truth is that all large corporations which employ an army of unskilled workmen are being compelled to offset so much mere muscle by a special department of brains. There is, besides, a most elaborate system of inspection. In the Deering factory I saw a squad of ten men who were testing the newly made binders with straw. "About three out of a hundred need fixing," said the foreman. The chains are tested by a violent pneumatic machine. Every link, even, is branded with a private mark--[triangle]. And in the Hamilton plant a new scheme is being tried--the whole packing gang has become a staff of inspection. Whenever a man finds a hundred defective pieces, he gets an extra dollar. One sharp-eyed Scot in the packing-room confided to me that he had made "as high as two shillin's a week." Such is the scope of the International Harvester Company, created in 1902. As to the men who control it, I have had the greatest difficulty in penetrating back of the business to their personal characteristics. For they dislike the fierce light that beats upon a rich American.