CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



the yellow wheat last Summer two thousand 

 miles north of St. Louis. 



In Argentina, too, and Australia, where the 

 wheat ripens just in time to decorate the Christ- 

 mas trees, there is to be seen the same conquest 

 of nature. Desolate plains are being tamed by 

 the plow and exploited by the harvesters. In 

 the semi-arid belt that lies east of the Rocky 

 Mountains, new kinds of wheat, less thirsty, are 

 being taught to grow. In Russia and Siberia 

 a vast tract of twenty-five million acres has 

 been rescued from idleness in the last fifteen 

 years. And even in the valley of the Euphrates, 

 where wheat, so it is believed, was born, a new 

 railway is now being constructed which, when 

 it is finished, will carry oil and wheat. 



By thus opening up new regions to settlement, 

 the wheat-farmer not only thwarts the monopo- 

 list and makes the world a larger place to live in, 

 he does more: he compels the gold to come 

 out of its vaults in the great cities and to flow 

 to the outermost parts of the earth. For every 

 eighteen thousand pounds of wheat that go to 

 the city, there will go back to the farmer one 



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