directly established one of the greatest, and certainly one of
the most romantic, of our industries--that of agricultural
machinery.

Above all, however, the victory at Appomattox threw upon the
country more than a million unemployed men. Our European critics
predicted that their return to civil life would produce dire
social and political consequences. But these critics were
thinking in terms of their own countries; they failed to consider
that the United States had an immense unoccupied domain which was
waiting for development. The men who fought the Civil War had
demonstrated precisely the adventurous, hardy instincts which
were most needed in this great enterprise. Even before the War
ended, a great immigration started towards the mines and farms of
the trans-Mississippi country. There was probably no important
town or district west of the Alleghanies that did not absorb a
considerable number. In most instances, too, our ex-soldiers
became leaders in these new communities. Perhaps this movement
has its most typical and picturesque illustration in the extent
to which the Northern soldiers opened up the oil-producing
regions of western Pennsylvania. Venango County, where this great
development started, boasted that it had more ex-soldiers than
any similar section of the United States.

The Civil War period also forced into prominence a few men whose
methods and whose achievements indicated, even though roughly and
indistinctly, a new type of industrial leadership. Every period
has its outstanding figure and, when the Civil War was
approaching its end, one personality had emerged from the humdrum
characters of the time--one man who, in energy, imagination, and