CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



pie, of North Dakota, led the way by dem- 

 onstrating what might be done by "bonanza 

 farms." This doughty Scottish- American se- 

 cured 30,000 acres of the Red River Valley in 

 1876, and put it all into wheat. It was such a 

 wheat-field as never before had been seen in any 

 country. The soil was turned with 150 gang 

 plows, sown with 70 drills, and reaped with 150 

 self-binders. Twelve threshing-machines, kept 

 busy in the midst of this sea of yellow grain, beat 

 out the straw and chaff and in the season filled 

 two freight trains a day with enough wheat in 

 each train to give two thousand people their 

 daily bread for a year. 



Led on by such pathfinders, American farm- 

 ers launched out bravely, until now they are 

 using very nearly a billion dollars' worth of 

 labor-saving machinery. The whole level of 

 farm life has been raised. It has been lifted 

 from muscle to mind. The use of machinery 

 has created leisure and capital, and these two 

 have begotten intelligence, education, science, so 

 that the farmer of to-day lives in a new world, 

 and is a wholly different person from what 



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