HIS LIFE AND WORK 



could cut and bind enough wheat in one season 

 to feed four hundred people. In its most highly 

 developed form, the combined harvester and 

 thresher, it has become so gigantic a machine 

 that thirty-two horses are required to haul it. 

 This leviathan cuts a fifty-foot roadway through 

 the grain, threshes it and bags it at the rate of 

 one bag every half-minute. And the total world 

 production of Reapers of every sort self- 

 binders, mowers, headers, corn-binders, etc., 

 is probably as many as 1,500,000 a year, two- 

 thirds of them being made in the United States. 

 Because of this harvesting machinery, the 

 wheat crop of the world is now nearly twice 

 what it was in 1879. The American crop has 

 multiplied six and a half times in fifty years. 

 Western Canada, Australia, Siberia, and Argen- 

 tina have become wheat producers. The cost of 

 growing one bushel in America, with machinery 

 and high wages, is now about half a dollar, 

 which is less than the cost in Europe and as low 

 as the cost in India, where laborers can be 

 hired for a few pennies a day. With a sickle, 

 the time-cost of a bushel of wheat was three 



