CHAPTER II 

 A CALL TO ARMS 



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And my hand hath found as a nest the riches J n\ h^^- 

 of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that fj ' /*L , L/-P A. 

 are left, have I gathered all the earth. r J& 



Isaiah 10: 14. 



FOR five thousand years Man has grown wheat for 

 food. Archa3ologists have found it buried with 

 the mummies of Egypt; the pictured stones of 

 the Pyramids record it. But it was the fo^Lo^princes, 



of peasants-^-of the aristocracy, not of the people; ^aai 

 for no mai4 could harvest enough of it with his sickle ^ 

 to create a supply which would place it within the 

 reach of the poor. While century after century* has 

 passed since wheat was first recognized as the premier 

 nourishment for the human body, it is only of recent 

 times that it has become the food of the nations. 



The swift development of grain growing into the 

 world's greatest industry goes back for a small begin- 

 ning to 1831. It was in that year that a young 

 American-born farm boy of Irish-Scotch extraction 

 was jeered and laughed at as he attempted to cut 

 wheat with the first crude reaper; but out of Cyrus 

 Hall McCormick's invention soon grew the wonderful 

 harvesting machinery which made possible the produc- 



* Wheat was first grown in Canada in 1606 at Port Royal (now 

 Annapolis) in Nova Scotia, where Champlain and Pourtincourt built a 

 fort and established a small colony. A plot of ground was made ready 

 and wheat planted. "It grew under the snow," said Pourtincourt, 

 " and in the following midsummer it was harvested." 





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