Yucatan is the only cheap-labour country that has been enriched by the harvester. Elsewhere it is the rule that the common people of the nation must reach a certain high level before the harvester trade can begin. Where human labour has little value, it is plainly not worth saving. [Illustration: IN THE ANCIENT FIELDS OF ALGIERS] For this reason, the harvester is the best barometer of civilisation. It cannot go where slavery and barbarism exist. It will not enter a land where the luxury of the city is built on the plunder of the men and women who work in the fields. Whoever operates a harvester must not only be intelligent: he must be free. To hundreds of millions of foreigners, the United States is known as "the country where the reapers come from." They realise, too, that farm machinery represents our type of genius, that it springs out of our national life, and comes from us as inevitably as song comes from Italy or silk from France. Why? Read the history of the United States. This was the first country, so far as we can know, where men of high intelligence went to work _en masse_ upon the soil, and under such conditions as compelled them to develop a high degree of mechanical skill. The pioneer American farmer had to be his own carpenter and blacksmith. He had to build his own house and make his own harness. Consequently, before this Farmers' Republic was two generations old, the reaper was born in the little workshop behind the barn. In the Old World every occupation stood alone and aloof. The mechanics knew nothing of the farm and the farmer knew nothing of the workshop. "Every man to his trade," said Europe, Asia, and Africa. But in the New World, where trades and classes and nationalities were flung together in a heterogenous jumble, there sprang up a race of handy, inventive farmers, set free from the habits and prejudices of their fathers. They were the first body of men who were competent to solve the problem of farm machinery. And so, the American harvester is much more than a handy device for cutting grain. It is the machine that makes democracy possible. It reaches the average man, and more--it pushes the ladder of prosperity down so far that even the farm labourer can grasp the lowest rung and climb. _It has become one of our national emblems. It is as truly and as exclusively American as the Stars and Stripes or the Declaration of Independence._ CHAPTER V THE HARVESTER AND THE AMERICAN FARMER If the American Farmer went out of business this year he could clean up thirty thousand million dollars. And he would have to sell his farm on credit; for there is not enough money in the whole world to pay him half his price.