transforming agriculture, we have developed not only our own
Western plains, but we have created new countries. Argentina
could hardly exist today except for American agricultural
machinery. Ex-President Loubet declared, a few years ago, that
France would starve to death except for the farming machines that
were turned out in Chicago. There is practically no part of the
world where our self-binders are not used. In many places America
is not known as the land of freedom and opportunity, but merely
as "the place from which the reapers come." The traveler suddenly
comes upon these familiar agents in every European country, in
South America, in Egypt, China, Algiers, Siberia, India, Burma,
and Australia. For agricultural machinery remains today, what it
has always been, almost exclusively an American manufacture. It
is practically the only native American product that our European
competitors have not been able to imitate. Tariff walls, bounty
systems, and all the other artificial aids to manufacturing have
not developed this industry in foreign lands, and today the
United States produces four-fifths of all the agricultural
machinery used in the world. The International Harvester Company
has its salesmen in more than fifty countries, and has
established large American factories in many nations of Europe.

One day, a few years before his death, Prince Bismarck was
driving on his estate, closely following a self-binder that had
recently been put to work. The venerable statesman, bent and
feeble, seemed to find a deep melancholy interest in the
operation.

"Show me the thing that ties the knot," he said. It was taken to
pieces and explained to him in detail. "Can these machines be