How is the soil everywhere wheat grows? Is there enough rain? Or too much? Owners of railroads and ships are interested in the size of the next wheat crop, for they will have to carry the grain and flour across land and water. Owners of flour mills want to know how much they will have to grind, and what they will have to pay for it. Men who buy and sell wheat, owners of grain elevators who store wheat, bakers of bread and makers of breakfast foods and macaroni are interested, too. Village storekeepers are anxious to know if the farmers will have little money or a great deal to spend. Factories want to know how much goods to make, railroads how many grain cars they will need. Every farmer who grows wheat wants to know what other farmers are doing, and what his wheat will be worth. Wheat is so important that our government makes a crop report once a month. Corn and oats and other foods are put in, too, but wheat comes first.

From the fuss that is made about it, you would think the farmers were tucking precious babies into cradles when they put the little brown wheat seeds into the ground. Well, they are. The world wants to know every day how those seed babies are getting along. Wheat has as many troubles as human babies. In dry summers little chinch bugs feed on them. In cool, moist summers the tiny Hessian fly, only one-sixth of an inch long, lays eggs that hatch into little worms on them. Then there is the mildew and rust. In the spring, wheat needs rain or melting snow. At harvest time warm sunshine to dry the ripe grain.

Harvest time is exciting. Where do you think the excitement begins? Not in the wheat field where the grain is turning from green to gold, but in big city banks that may be a thousand miles away. The farmers must have a lot of money to pay men and machines to save the wheat. They go to the banks in the small towns where they trade, to borrow money. In a few weeks, when the wheat is sold, they can pay the money back. The little banks have to borrow money of the big city banks.

Come and see a big wheat farm in harvest time. It is a golden fleece as far as you can see. First come the reapers to shear the fleece. In the old days, and in many backward countries today, men cut wheat with scythes by hand. An American fastened a number of scythes or blades to a shaft and. made a reaping machine that could cut as much wheat as many men. (See McCormick, page 1133.) The reaper not only cuts the wheat but gathers it in bundles with the heads all one way, and ties the bundles. It is really a reaper and binder. Men gather the bundles behind the reaper and stack them in shocks for the sun to dry the grain

A few weeks later a big red threshing machine goes from farm to farm It is run by steam, like a fire engine, and it makes the same chug-chugging noise. It stands in the middle of the field. One man runs the engine. Others bring the bundles, feed them to the thresher. The heads are torn off, and the straw showered out behind. The grains are shelled from the husk, the chaff blown out in a golden rain, and the wheat grains dropped below. In one day a big thresher can clean two thousand bushels of wheat. It takes a great many men to feed its clattering iron jaws, to pitch the straw back so the thresher will not be buried, and to catch the grain in bags or wagon beds. And you ought to see the harvesters eat! Farmer's wives and daughters have to work a week to get food enough for one day. A combined reaping and threshing machine is now made which cuts the wheat, threshes it and delivers the cleaned grain in sacks.

Then what happens? The wheat cannot lie on the ground, and no farmer can afford to have a great storage house that he would use only a few weeks. His nearest town on a railroad has one for all the farmers who trade in that town. This storage house is called a grain elevator. It stands beside the railway. It looks like a very tall barn with only a few windows near the top. Often it is covered with sheet iron so it will not easily catch fire. Some elevators are tall, round towers of steel and cement. They are built in groups, and roofed with iron.