forces over which they
had no control.

One by one these battle-worn Westerners came to New York, "on an exploring
expedition," as one of them said. Here they met Judge Elbert H. Gary, whom
they had known intimately in Chicago. Gary had been William Deering's
attorney for twenty-five years. He was a farmer's son, and had risen to be
the official head of the Steel Trust; so that he was the one man who had
an expert knowledge at once of farms, harvesters, and mergers. And
naturally, when the Chicagoans ran to Gary with their tales of woe, he
brought them across Broadway into the office of J. P. Morgan, which had
become in 1902 a sort of Tribunal of Industrial Peace.

There were four of them--Cyrus H. McCormick, Charles Deering, J. J.
Glessner, and W. H. Jones--and all of them added to the strong preference
for competition a definite opposition to trusts, monopolies, and stock
speculation. They were not the Wall Street type of millionaire. In that
time of booming optimism, they might have made more money in one year by
selling stock than they had made in thirty years by selling harvesters.
But no one of them had tried it. The fact is that they cared more for
the good-will of the farmers and the prestige of their machines than they
did for larger profits. The thing that troubled them most in the proposed
consolidation of properties, one of the Morgan partners told me, was the
fear that prices would in any case have to be raised, because of the
increasing cost of labour and raw materials.

[Illustration: HAROLD McCORMICK Photo by Matzene, Chicago, 1905

J. J. GLESSNER

W. H. JONES Photo by Smith, Evanston, Ill.

JAMES DEERING Photo by Dyer, Chicago]

No wonder that the financiers who undertook to organise them were driven
almost to distraction by their obstinate independence. They had as many
contradictory opinions as a Russian Duma; and it was soon clear that the
only possible way to proceed was to keep them apart until all possible
preliminaries were arranged.

So the four Harvester Men went back home until the details of the new
combination should be worked out. Then they were summoned again to New
York. As was their custom, they went to different hotels, and each man was
handled separately until he was in an organisable frame of mind. This
master-stroke of diplomacy was accomplished by George W. Perkins--Morgan's
most versatile partner; and it gave Perkins a day and a night that he
will never forget. From mo