Thus, because the sisal hemp or henequen of Yucatan is the only fiber which can be produced in sufficient quantities at a low price to meet the farmer’s need for binder twine, the wheat for the world’s food supply depends vitally on the product of this one distant state of Mexico. Without its humble aid, the American farmer might, conceivably, hark back to the binding of wheat sheaves by hand--it is certain that we could anticipate the scrapping of billions of dollars’ worth of mechanical harvesters in the substitution of some other method than theirs. The only other fiber that will serve for the making of binder twine is true Manila hemp, whose total crop would not fill a tenth of the needs of the world’s annual harvest, and whose finer quality and greater cost have caused it to be devoted almost exclusively to the making of high-class cordage. Cotton and jute and silk and all other known or promised vegetable or animal fibers from which binder twine might conceivably be made have proven useless for the purpose. One of them is too stout, one too soft, one too short of fiber, one not brittle enough, another too brittle. Sisal, the Yucatan henequen, is to-day the only hemp which meets all demands of the world’s annual wheat harvest, a demand which has reached the colossal total of 400,000,000 pounds a year. Upon this need has been built the one great creative industry of Mexico, the one business, agricultural or manufacturing, which in Mexico produces wealth through human energy. Its source is the long-leaved henequen plant, to whose necessarily slow growth for fiber the sandy, desert soil of the Yucatan coastland is peculiarly adapted. The henequen is a species of the great agave, that strange, cactus-like “Century plant,” which is found in one form or another in almost all desert countries. As the maguey, it grows in the great Central Mexican plateau, furnishing the heavy drink called _pulque_, and giving up a hand-extracted fiber which has been woven into the raiment of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico for centuries. Still other varieties, in the warmer sections of Mexico, furnish food for cattle and, distilled, the fiery _mescal_ or _tequila_ which is an even more terrible curse of Mexico than the much-berated _pulque_. It is the henequen, however, which is the most commercially useful of all the agaves, for its narrow leaves, three to four feet long, are peculiarly adapted to the mechanical extraction of their fiber (which most of the agaves are not). The coarse, rasping, yellow strands have the thickness and the strength of horsehair, so that they survive the vigorous de-pulping process of the great gin-like machines. After drying, they furnish a stout fiber which, when woven into thick cord, ties the wheat sheaves in the harvester, and breaks easily as each sheaf is thrown back into the thresher in the gorgeous pageant of the harvest.