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 Evening after evening the machine crawled forward across the tiny field, setting the plants in perfect order. Steve Hunter busied himself with it; he did nothing else; and rumors of a great company to be formed in Bidwell to manufacture the device were whispered about. Every evening a new tale was told. Steve went to Cleveland for a day and it was said that Bid- well was to lose its chance, that big moneyed men had induced Steve to take his factory project to the city. Hearing Ed Hall berate a farmer who doubted the practicability of the machine, Steve took him aside and talked to him. " We're going to need live young men who know how to handle other men for jobs as super- intendent and things like that," he said. " I make no promises. I only want to tell you that I like live young fellows who can see the hole in a bushel basket. I like that kind. I like to see them get up in the world." Steve heard the farmers continually expressing their skepticism about making the plants that had been set by the machine grow into maturity, and had the car- penter build another tiny field in a side window of the store. He had the machine moved and plants set in the new field. He let these grow. When some of the plants showed signs of dying he came secretly at night and replaced them with sturdier shoots so that the miniature field showed always a brave, vigorous front to the world. Bidwell became convinced that the most rigorous of all forms of human labor practiced by its people was at an end. Steve made and had hung in the store window a large sheet showing the relative cost of plant- ing an acre of cabbage with the machine, and by what