Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work

tates had given the notice of its birth. There was the young inventor, with the one machine that the human race most needed, in a remote cleft of the Virgi

n an age of faith and optimism-when every new invention is welcomed with a shout of joy. He confronted a scept

stage-coach and tinder-box. Practically no such thing was known as farm machinery. Jethro Wood had invented his iron plow, but he was at this time dying in poverty, never having been able to persuade farmers to abandon their plows of wood. As for steel plows, no one in any count

iment with locomotives, horses, and sails, to ascertain which one of these three was the best method of propulsion. The first really successful American locomo

. The United States was a twenty-four-State republic, with very little knowledge of two-thirds of its own territory. The source of the Mississippi River, for instance, was unknown. To send a letter from Boston to New York cost the price of half a bushel of wheat. There was no newspaper in Wi

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ralist. Gladstone was a student at Oxford. Proudhon was working at the case as a poor printer. Oliver Wendell Holmes was somewhat aimlessly studying law. Chopin was on his way to Paris. Tennyson had left college, without a degree, to devote his life to the service o

eath" period. Seventy-five thousand people had been imprisoned for debt in New York in a single year, and a workingmen's party had sprung up as a protest against such intolerable conditions. Even as late as 1837 there was a bread riot in the city of New York. Five

t was slow and dull and largely hostile to whoever would teach it a better way of working. And we shall now see

ne hour by my machines now in use." Fulton had died at fifty, plagued and plundered by imitators. Kay, Jacquard, Heathcoat, and Hargreaves, inventors of weaving machinery, were mobbed. Arkwright's mill was burned by incendiaries. Gute

his Reaper," said one of the neighbors. Once while riding home on horseback in the Summer of 1832, his horse stopped to drink in the centre of a stream, and as he looked out upon the fields of yellow grain, shimmering in the sunlight, the dazzling thought flashe

and hardihood in his own character. He received a tract of land from his father, and proceeded with might and main to

se-to appoint agents. And he had no me

sale at $50.00 apiece, and gives four testimonials from farmers. But nothing came of this advertisement. No farmer came forward to buy. The four men who had given testimonials had only seen th

rofit. There was a large deposit of iron ore near by, and he resolved to build a furnace and make iron. Iron was the most expensive item in the making of a reaper. At that time it was $50.00 a ton-two and a half cents a pound. So as he had been unable to establish the Reaper business with a far

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yrus made the patterns for the moulds, and, because of his great strength, did much of the heaviest labor. But the work was so incessant that he had no time to build Reapers.

he perils

meddles with

ave up his farm to the creditors, and whatever other property he had that was saleable. He did not give up the Reaper, and nobody would have taken it if he had. Thus far, he had made no progress

not felt was possible before-he began to make Reapers. Without money, without credit, without customers, he founded the first of the world's reaper factories in the little log workshop near his father's house. In the year of

h. That the Reaper did the work of ten men, they could not deny. But it was driven by an expert. "It's all very wonderful, but I'm running a farm, not a circus," thought the average s

s, a David Gilkerson who made furniture, a Jacob Kurtz who made spinning wheels, and an Absalom Brooks who made harness. But n

s John Knox had to his Bible. He went back to the little log workshop with a

teamster named John Brains had brought suit. His bill had been $72.00 and he had been paid more than three-fourths of the money. But the constable was so impressed with the honesty and industry of the McCormicks, that he rode back to town without ha

looking machine, which was regarded as part marvel and part freak, had been put up to auction in that neighborhood of farmers, very likely it would have found no

ut to Cyrus he was an angel of light. He had come to buy a Reaper. He had been one of the spectators at the Staunton exhibition, and he h

TH CRADLES

had never seen a Reaper, but they had faith. They were notable men. Both ordered machines, and Cyrus McCormick accepted one of the orders only, as he was not satisfied with the way his Reaper worked in grain that was wet.

year to try out his machine and to improve it. He had now sold two, so that there were three Reapers clicking through the grain-fields in the Summer

ercome, because in that primitive neighborhood McCormick could not secure the best workmanship in the making of the cutting-blade. However, this

om Abraham Smith, he fixed the price at $100 and became a salesman. By great persistence he sold seven Reapers in 1842, twenty-nine in 1843, and fifty in 1844.

the harvest. There was strong opposition in several places by day laborers. A trusted workman who was sent out to collect $300 ran away with

ore than paid for itself in one harvest," he said; and he gave $1,333 for the right to sell Reapers in eight counties. Closely after this man came Colonel Tutwiler, who agreed to pay $2,500 for the right to sell in southern Virginia. And a manufacturer in Richmond, J.

yrus, devoting its best energies to the making of Reapers. The Reapers were made and then, when the question of their transportation arose, Cyrus for the first time saw clearly that the Virginia farm was not the best site for a factory. To get the seven Reapers to the West, they had first to be carried in wagons to Scottsville, then by canal to Richmond, re-shipped down the James River to

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for this idea. It was the call of the West. So one morning he put $300 into his belt and set off on a 3,000-mile journey to establish the empire of

ss plains amazed him. And he was quick to see that this great land ocean was the na

le soil had given Illinois five million bushels of wheat, and it was too much. It was more than the sickle and the scythe could cut. Men toiled and sweltered to save the yellow affluence from destruction. They worked by day and by night; and their wives and children wor

n & Company in Brockport, N. Y., Henry Bear in Missouri, Gray & Warner in Illinois, and A. C. Brown in Cincinnati. These manufacturers, and the McCormick family in Virginia, built 190 Reapers for the harvest of 1846. This was multiplying the bus

e fact that the supremacy in wheat was slowly passing from Virginia to Ohio. He took note of the railroads that were creeping westward. He remembered the limitless prairies, far out in the sunset country, that were still uncultivated. Plainly, he must make Reapers in a factory of his own,