"Many of our agents are now living in Siberia with their families," said C. S. Funk, the General Manager of the International. "They are teaching the mujiks to grow wheat and harvest it. We have similar missionaries in South Africa and South America and most of the countries of the world. Some of them have gone as far as water and rail would carry them, and have then crossed the mountains with their machinery on the backs of mules, so that they might teach the natives how to farm on the American plan. All told, we have more than a thousand such missionaries in foreign countries." In Chicago, I met two of the leaders who are in control of this army of teachers. One was a strong-faced young Illinoisan named Couchman, who handles several nations from Hamburg; and the other was a courteous commercial diplomat named La Porte, who supervises France, Spain, Italy, and Northern Africa from his office in Paris. Each is in charge of several hundred American mechanics, who are exiled from home for the sake of our harvester trade. No renown comes to these men. No medals are pinned upon their coats. They are only one regiment in the great pay-envelope army of American mechanics. But they are on the firing-line of the greatest battle against ignorance and famine that has ever been fought. They are the pioneers of the new farmer. To show the world's peasantry how to work with brains and machinery, to bring them up to the American farmer's level--that is their task. What could be more essentially American, or more profitable to the human race? Many European farmers, of course, are easily up to the Kansas level; but the vast majority have been mistaught that the path of the farmer must forever be watered with sweat. Many of them are so cramped by the shackles of drudgery that they cannot even conceive of the value of leisure. "Why don't you use a scythe? Then you could cut twice as much," said Horace Greeley, who was deeply interested in farm machinery and agriculture, to a French peasant. The peasant scratched his head. This was a new idea. "Because," he answered stodgily, "I haven't got twice as much to cut." The quick, handy ways of American farmers are seldom found in other countries. A Swiss will put a big stone upon a land-roller, to give it weight, and then walk behind it. To ride on the roller himself does not occur to him. A South German will usually take the reel off his reaper, and handle the grain by hand. Operating five levers is too great a tax upon his mind. An Argentinian wastes his pesos by hiring drivers--one on the seat and another astride one of the horses. "A Spanish farmer sent for me on one occasion," an expert told me, "and I found him in great trouble. He had bought a new harvester, and put it together _inside_ his barn, which had only one narrow door. He had to choose between taking the machine to pieces and pulling his barn down."