[CHAPTER XII]
THE REAPER AND THE WORLD
WE shall now see what the invention of the Reaper means to the human race as a whole. We shall leave behind McCormick and the United States, and survey the field from a higher standpoint. The selection of wheat as the first world-food,—its abundance made possible by the Reaper—its transportation by railroads and steamships—its storage in elevators—the production of flour—the growth of wheat-banks, wheat-ports, and exchanges—the new wheat empires—the international mechanism of marketing—the conquest of famine and the stupendous possibilities of the future! These are the subjects that group themselves under the general title—The Reaper and the World.
To find a world-food,—that was the beginning of the problem. All human beings wake up hungry every morning of their lives; and consequently the first necessity of the day is food. The search for food is the oldest of instincts. It is the master-motive of evolution. It has reared empires up and thrown them down. As Buckle has shown, where the national food is cheap and plentiful, population increases more rapidly. And as Sir James Crichton-Browne, in a recent book on "Parcimony in Nutrition," maintains, the lack of food is a prolific cause of war, disease, and social misery in its various forms. "Nothing is more demoralizing," he says, "than chronic hunger."
"For lack of bread the French Revolution failed," said Prince Krapotkin. For lack of bread the opium traffic flourishes in India and China; the secret of the prevalence of opium is that the natives use it to prevent hunger-pangs in time of famine. Once let those countries have cheap bread, and there may be no more opium sold there than there is to-day in Kansas. For lack of bread came the war between Russia and Japan; what the one nation wanted was a seaport for the grain of Siberia, and what the other wanted was more land for the support of her swarming population. For lack of bread have come most of the crimes of greed and violence,—most of the social systems based on sordid self-interest, most of the ill-humor that has postponed the coming of an era of peace on earth and good-will among men.
Now, of the three main foods of the human race, flesh, rice, and wheat, wheat is the best suited to be a world-food. Flesh becomes too expensive once the wild game of the forests is destroyed; and it is not suitable for food in tropical countries. Rice, on the other hand, is not a flesh-forming food, and so is not suited for food in cold countries. Wheat is the one food that is universal, as good for the Esquimaux as for the South Sea Islander. It is not easily spoiled, as milk and fruits are; and it contains all the elements that are needed by the body and in just about the right proportion.
Wheat, to the botanist, is a grass—"a degraded lily," to quote from Grant Allen. It was originally a flower that was tamed by man and trained from beauty to usefulness. We do not know when or where the prehistoric Burbank lived who undertook this education of the wheat-lily. But we do know that wheat has been a food for at least five thousand years. We find it in the oldest tombs of Egypt and pictured on the stones of the Pyramids. We know that Solomon sent wheat as a present to his friend, the King of Tyre; and we have reason to believe that its first appearance was in the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, near where the ancient city of Babylon rose to greatness.
Chart Showing Relative Distribution of Values by Producing Countries in 1908 of World's Production of Five Principal Grains. Approximate Value, $9,280,000,000
Chart Showing Relative Values in 1908 of World's Production of the Five Principal Grains. Approximate Value, $9,280,000,000