unbuilt; and most
of its architects and builders were unborn or in the cradle. Spencer was
eleven years of age; Virchow was ten; Pasteur nine; Huxley six; Berthelot
four; and as for Haeckel, Carnegie, Morgan, Edison and their generation,
they had not yet appeared in the land of the living.

Then came the Reaper.

This unappreciated machine, about which so little has been written,
changed the face of the world. It moved the civilised nations up out of
the bread line. It made prosperity possible; and elevated the whole
struggle for existence to a higher plane.

Life is still a race--always will be; but not for bread. The lowest prizes
now are gold watches and steam yachts and automobiles. Even the hobo at
the back door scorns bread, unless we apologise for it with meat and jam.

It is so plentiful--this clean, white bread, that it is scarcely an
article of commerce any longer. In our hotels it is thrown in free of
charge, as though it were a pinch of salt or a glass of water. There is no
"penn'orth of bread" in the bill, as there was in Falstaff's day.

Seven bushels of wheat apiece! That is what we eighty-five million people
ate in 1906--twelve thousand million loaves of bread. Such a year of
feasting was new in the history of the world. And yet we sent a thousand
million dollars' worth of food to other nations.

Suppose that bread were money, just for one day! What a lesson it would be
on the social value of the reaper! Thirty loaves would be the day's pay of
a labourer--as much as he could carry on his back. Two loaves for a
cigar--three for a shave--five for a bunch of violets--forty for a theatre
ticket--a hundred for a bottle of champagne! Is there anything cheaper
than bread?

The reaper was America's answer to Malthus--who scared England into
abolishing the Corn Laws by his proclamation that "the ultimate check to
population is the lack of food." What would that well-meaning pessimist
think were he now alive, if he were told that the human race is growing
wheat at the rate of ten bushels a year per family? Or that Minnesota and
the Dakotas (names that the world of his day had never heard) produce
enough wheat to feed all the people of England?

The reaper was America's answer to the world's demand for democracy.
Instead of bread riots and red flags and theories of an earthly paradise
in which nobody worked but the Government, the United States invented a
machine that gave democracy a chance. Instead of a g