CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



of ripe wheat a day and transports it hither and 

 thither as handily as though the whole round 

 earth were girt with belt-conveyors. 



That young Virginian farmer who awoke 

 from his dream and made his dream come true, 

 made it possible for a few in each country to 

 provide enough food for all. He found a cure 

 for Hunger, which had always persisted like a 

 chronic disease. He heaped the plates on the 

 tables of thirty-six nations. He took a drudgery 

 and transformed it into a profession. He in- 

 structed the wheat-eating races how to increase 

 the "seven small loaves" so that the multitudes 

 should be fed. He picked up the task of feeding 

 the hungry masses the Christly task that had 

 lain unfulfilled for eighteen centuries, and led 

 the way in organizing it into a system of inter- 

 national reciprocity. 



To-day there is no longer in most countries 

 any tragic note in the Epic of the Wheat. There 

 is no sweating peasant with a hoe. The plow- 

 man may even sit, it he wishes, upon the sliding 

 steel knife that slices the soil into furrows, or 

 upon the steel harrow that combs the clods into 



[244] 



