The bulk of the farmers, so far as I could harmonise their opinions, are now too well accustomed to big enterprises among themselves to be scared by the Chicago merger. They have at the present time more than five thousand coöperative companies of their own. And some of these are of national importance; as, for instance, the powerful Cotton Growers' Trust, and the Farmers' Business Congress, which owns 800 elevators for the storage of grain. "My only objection to the International Harvester Company," said a business man in St. Paul, "is that it sells its machinery cheaper in Europe than it does in the United States." I investigated this charge, and found it wholly incorrect. The greater expense and risk of foreign trade compels the manufacturers to ask almost as high prices as American farmers had to pay twenty years ago. But there is a quite credible reason for this rumour. It is simply this--that for some less progressive countries a crude, old-fashioned reaper is being made, to sell for $45. The modern, self-rake reaper is too complex for the simple mind of many a Russian farmer, so he is supplied with a clumsy machine which is $15 cheaper, but which looked, to my unskilled eye, more than $30 worse. No one accuses the "Trust" of having unreasonably raised prices. On the contrary, it is generally given full credit for holding prices down, in spite of the fact that it is paying from twenty to eighty per cent. more for its labour and raw materials than was paid in 1902. Generally speaking, all farm implements except thrashing-machines are cheaper now than they were in 1880, when the competition was most strenuous. Binders have dropped from $325 to $125; hay-rakes from $25 to $16; and mowers from $80 to $45. "I paid $200 for a self-binding harvester twenty-five years ago," said a Kansas farmer. "Ten years later I bought another for $140 and in 1907 I bought one from the International for $125, which is in my judgment the best of the three machines." The International has competitors, too--very active and able ones. Binders are made by 4 large independent companies, mowers by 17, corn-shredders by 18, twine by 26, wagons by 116, and gasolene engines by 124. Of the thirty-seven different machines made by the International there are only three--hemp-reapers, corn-shockers, and rice-binders--that are made by no other company, and even these machines are not protected by any basic patents. Powerful as the International is, it is still far from the place where business is one long sweet dream of monopoly. The four independent companies that make binders seem to have no fear of the "Trust." "We have no fault to find with it," said President Atwater, of the Johnson Company. "We don't want it smashed. Why? Because our business has doubled since it was organised; and because we would sooner compete with one company than with a dozen."