To-day they are not battling with one another on the royal farms of Europe, like gladiators who make sport for emperors. There is more business and less adventure. They have a geography of their own, and have divided the whole world into eight provinces. The "Domestic" Department of the International comprises the United States and Canada and is managed from Chicago. Central Europe, with Russia and Siberia, has its headquarters at Hamburg; Western Europe and Northern Africa are handled from Paris; Great Britain is directed from London; South America from Buenos Ayres; Australia from Melbourne; New Zealand from Christchurch; and Mexico from Mexico City. Such is the commercial empire that has its seat at the foot of Lake Michigan. Other countries can sell us automobiles and bric-a-brac. They may even get over our tariff wall with hay and cotton and steel and lumber. But they have never dared to try to sell us farm machinery. Every harvester in the United States was made at home. [Illustration: GATHERING IN A FINLAND HARVEST] Either one of the two immense harvester plants of Chicago is larger than the combined plants of England, Germany, and France. France, recently, made a brilliant dash toward success in the harvester business. M. Racquet, a journalist, built a great factory at Amiens. He bought the best American machinery. He allied himself with a savings bank and sold stock to the farmers. He was protected by a high tariff. But, alas for his eloquent prospectus! His selling force was too small. His American machinery made more reapers in a month than he could sell in a year. And in 1904 he fell into bankruptcy under a debt of ten million francs. An American harvester is practically above competition in foreign countries, and commands an exceptional price. As for tariffs, there is a wide open door in Great Britain, Holland, Norway, Bulgaria, Brazil, Servia, and South Germany. But there is a toll-gate fee of $25 per harvester in Hungary, and $20 in France; and for lack of a commercial treaty, the tax has lately been increased in part of Germany, in Hungary, Switzerland, and Rumania. The harvester companies feel that they have a substantial grievance against a government that allows them to be not only hazed and harried at home by tariffs on raw material, but driven out of foreign markets as well. "The whole world is doing business on a single street to-day," said one harvester maker; "but the trouble is that there are two hundred tariff toll-gates along that street."