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CYRUS HALL McCORMICK
His Life and Work
[Illustration: C. H. McCormick (signature)]
CYRUS HALL McCORMICK
His Life and Work
by
HERBERT N. CASSON
Author of
"The Romance of Steel," "The Romance of the Reaper," etc.
Illustrated
[Illustration]
Chicago
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1909
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1909
Published October, 1909
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England
The Lakeside Press
R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company
Chicago
INTRODUCTION
Whoever wishes to understand the making of the United States must read
the life of Cyrus Hall McCormick. No other one man so truly represented
the dawn of the industrial era,--the grapple of the pioneer with the
crudities of a new country, the replacing of muscle with machinery, and
the establishment of better ways and better times in farm and city
alike. Beginning exactly one hundred years ago, the life of McCormick
spanned the heroic period of our industrial advancement, when great
things were done by great individuals. To know McCormick is to know what
type of man it was who created the United States of the nineteenth
century. And now that a new century has arrived, with a new type of
business development, it may be especially instructive to review a life
that was so structural and so fundamental.
As Professor Simon Newcomb has observed, "It is impressive to think how
few men we should have had to remove from the earth during the past
three centuries to have stopped the advance of our civilization." From
this point of view, there are few, if any, who will appear to be more
indispensable than McCormick. He was not brilliant. He was not
picturesque. He was no caterer for fame or favor. But he was as
necessary as bread. He fed his country as truly as Washington created it
and Lincoln preserved it. He abolished our agricultural peasantry so
effectively that we have had to import our muscle from foreign countries
ever since. And he added an immense province to the new empire of mind
over matter, the expansion of which has been and is now the highest and
most important of all human endeavors.
As the master builder of the modern business of manufacturing farm
machinery, McCormick set in motion so many forces of human betterment
that the fruitfulness of his life can never be fully told. There are
to-day in all countries more than one hundred thousand patents for
inventions that were meant to lighten the labor of the farmer. And the
cereal crop of the world has risen with incredible gains, until this
year its value will be not far from ten thousand millions of
dollars,--very nearly the equivalent of all the gold in coin and jewelry
and bullion.
So, if there is not power and fascination in this story, it will be the
fault of the story-teller, and not of his theme. The story itself is
destined to be told and retold. It cannot be forgotten, because it is
one of those rare life-histories that blazon out the peculiar genius of
the nation under the stress of a new experience. As it is passed on from
generation to generation, it may finally be polished into an Epic of the
Wheat,--the tale of Man's long wrestle with Famine, and how he won at
last by creating a world-wide system for the production and distribution
of the Bread.
H. N. C.
CHICAGO, _September 1, 1909_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE WORLD'S NEED OF A REAPER 1
II. THE McCORMICK HOME 13
III. THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 26
IV. SIXTEEN YEARS OF PIONEERING 48
V. THE BUILDING OF THE REAPER BUSINESS 68
VI. THE STRUGGLE TO PROTECT PATENTS 91
VII. THE EVOLUTION OF THE REAPER 105
VIII. THE CONQUEST OF EUROPE 123
IX. McCORMICK AS A MANUFACTURER 139
X. CYRUS H. McCORMICK AS A MAN 154
XI. THE REAPER AND THE NATION 188
XII. THE REAPER AND THE WORLD 203
XIII. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD 234
INDEX 249
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK _Frontispiece_
OLD BLACKSMITH SHOP ON WALNUT GROVE FARM, VIRGINIA 14
THE OLD McCORMICK HOMESTEAD, WALNUT GROVE FARM, ROCKBRIDGE
COUNTY, VIRGINIA 18
PORTRAIT OF ROBERT McCORMICK 22
PORTRAIT OF MRS. MARY ANN HALL McCORMICK 24
NEW PROVIDENCE CHURCH, ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA 28
FACSIMILES FROM MANUSCRIPT BY MR. McCORMICK, GIVING HIS OWN
ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE REAPER 30
FIRST PRACTICAL REAPING MACHINE 34
THE FIELD ON WHICH THE FIRST McCORMICK REAPER WAS TRIED,
WALNUT GROVE FARM, VIRGINIA 38
INTERIOR OF BLACKSMITH SHOP IN WHICH C. H. McCORMICK BUILT
HIS FIRST REAPER 42
REAPING WITH CRUDE KNIVES IN INDIA 50
REAPING WITH SICKLES IN ALGERIA 56
REAPING WITH CRADLES IN ILLINOIS 60
AN EARLY ADVERTISEMENT FOR McCORMICK'S PATENT VIRGINIA REAPER 64
THE McCORMICK REAPER OF 1847, ON WHICH SEATS WERE PLACED FOR
THE DRIVER AND THE RAKER 70
PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1839 76
PANORAMIC VIEW SHOWING THE McCORMICK REAPER WORKS BEFORE THE
CHICAGO FIRE OF 1871, ON CHICAGO RIVER, EAST OF RUSH
STREET BRIDGE 82
MEN OF PROGRESS 96
THE FIRST McCORMICK SELF-RAKE REAPING MACHINE 112
PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1858 120
PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1867 136
McCORMICK REAPER CUTTING ON A SIDE HILL IN PENNSYLVANIA 144
REAPER DRAWN BY OXEN IN ALGERIA 150
THE REAPER IN HEAVY GRAIN 166
HARVESTING NEAR SPOKANE, WASHINGTON 174
PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1883 182
THE WORKS OF THE McCORMICK HARVESTING MACHINE COMPANY 190
McCORMICK REAPER IN USE IN RUSSIA 196
CHART SHOWING RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION OF VALUES BY PRODUCING
COUNTRIES OF 1908 OF WORLD'S PRODUCTION OF FIVE
PRINCIPAL GRAINS 206
CHART SHOWING RELATIVE VALUES IN 1908 OF THE WORLD'S
PRODUCTION OF THE FIVE PRINCIPAL GRAINS 206
MAMMOTH WHEAT-FIELD IN SOUTH DAKOTA WITH TWENTY HARVESTERS
IN LINE 214
HARVESTING IN ROUMANIA 222
HARVESTING HEAVY GRAIN, SOUTH AMERICA 230
INDIANS REAPING THEIR HARVEST, WHITE EARTH, MINNESOTA 236
A HARVEST SCENE UPON A RUSSIAN ESTATE 242
CYRUS HALL McCORMICK HIS LIFE AND WORK
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD'S NEED OF A REAPER
Either by a very strange coincidence, or as a phenomenon of the instinct
of self-preservation, the year 1809, which was marked by famine and
tragedy in almost every quarter of the globe, was also a most prolific
birthyear for men of genius. Into this year came Poe, Blackie, and
Tennyson, the poet laureates of America, Scotland, and England; Chopin
and Mendelssohn, the apostles of sweeter music; Lincoln, who kept the
United States united; Baron Haussemann, the beautifier of Paris;
Proudhon, the prophet of communism; Lord Houghton, who did much in
science, and Darwin, who did most; FitzGerald, who made known the
literature of Persia; Bonar, who wrote hymns; Kinglake, who wrote
histories; Holmes, who wrote sentiment and humor; Gladstone, who
ennobled the politics of the British empire; and McCormick, who gave the
world cheap bread, and whose life-story is now set before us in the
following pages.
None of these eminent men, except Lincoln, began life in as remote and
secluded a corner of the world as McCormick. His father's farm was at
the northern edge of Rockbridge County, Virginia, in a long, thin strip
of fairly fertile land that lay crumpled between the Blue Ridge on the
east and the Alleghanies on the west. It was eighteen miles south of the
nearest town of Staunton, and a hundred miles from the Atlantic coast.
The whole region was a quiet, industrious valley, whose only local
tragedy had been an Indian massacre in 1764, in which eighty white
settlers had been put to death by a horde of savages.
The older men and women of 1809 could remember when wolf-heads were used
as currency; and when the stocks and the ducking stool stood in the main
street of Staunton. Also, they were fond of telling how the farmers of
the valley, when they heard that the Revolution had begun in
Massachusetts, carted 137 barrels of flour to Frederick, one hundred
miles north, and ordered it sent forthwith to the needy people of
Boston. This grew to be one of the most popular tales of local
history,--an epic of the patriots who fought for liberty, not with
gunpowder but flour.
By 1809 the more severe hardships of the pioneer days had been overcome.
Houses were still built of logs, but they were larger and better
furnished. In the McCormick homestead, for instance, there was a parlor
which had the dignity of mahogany furniture, and the luxury of books and
a carpet. The next-door county of Augusta boasted of thirteen carriages
and one hundred and two cut-glass decanters. And the chief sources of
excitement had evolved from Indian raids and wolf-hunts into elections,
lotteries, and litigation.
It was perhaps fortunate for the child McCormick that he was born in
such an out-of-the-way nook, for the reason that in 1809 almost the
whole civilized world was in a turmoil. In England mobs of unemployed
men and women were either begging for bread or smashing the new machines
that had displaced them in the factories. In the Tyrol, sixty thousand
peasants, who had revolted from the intolerable tyranny of the
Bavarians, were being beaten into submission. In Servia, the Turks were
striking down a rebellion by building a pyramid of thirty thousand
Servian skulls,--a tragic pile which may still be seen midway between
Belgrade and Stamboul. Sweden was being trampled under the feet of a
Russian army; and the greater part of Holland, Austria, Germany, and
Spain had been so scourged by the hosts of Napoleon as to be one vast
shamble of misery and blood.
In the United States there was no war, but there certainly did exist an
abnormal surplus of adversity. The young republic, which had fewer white
citizens than the two cities of New York and Chicago possess to-day, was
being terrorized in the West by the Indian Confederacy of Tecumseh; and
its flag had been flouted by England, France, and the Barbary pirates.
Its total revenue was much less than the value of last year's hay crop
in Vermont. It was desperately poor, with its people housed for the most
part in log cabins, clothed in homespun, and fed every winter on food
that would cause a riot in any modern penitentiary.
There was no such thing known, except in dreams, as the use of machinery
in the cultivation of the soil. The average farmer, in all civilized
countries, believed that an iron plow would poison the soil. He planted
his grain by the phases of the moon; kept his cows outside in winter;
and was unaware that glanders was contagious. Joseph Jenks, of Lynn, had
invented the scythe in 1655, "for the more speedy cutting of grasse";
and a Scotchman had improved it into the grain cradle. But the greater
part of the grain in all countries was, a century ago, being cut by the
same little hand sickle that the Egyptians had used on the banks of the
Nile and the Babylonians in the valley of the Euphrates.
The wise public men of that day knew how urgent was the need of better
methods in farming. Fifteen years before, George Washington had said,
"I know of no pursuit in which more real and important service can be
rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture." But it was
generally believed that the task was hopeless; and any effort to
encourage inventors had hitherto been a failure. An English society, for
instance, had offered a prize of one hundred and fifty dollars for a
better method of reaping grain, and the only answer it received was from
a traveller who had seen the Belgians reaping with a two-foot scythe and
a cane; the cane was used to push the grain back before it was cut, so
that more grain could be cut at a blow. As to whether or not he received
the prize for this discovery is not recorded.
The city of New York in 1809 was not larger than the Des Moines of
to-day, and not nearly so well built and prosperous. Two miles to the
north of it, through swamps and forests, lay the clearing that is now
known as Herald Square. There was no street railway, nor cooking range,
nor petroleum, nor savings bank, nor friction match, nor steel plow,
neither in New York nor anywhere else. And the one pride and boast of
the city was Fulton's new steamboat, the _Clermont_, which could waddle
to Albany and back, if all went well, in three days or possibly four.
As for social conditions, they were so hopelessly bad that few had the
heart to improve them. The house that we call a "slum tenement" to-day
would have made an average American hotel in 1809. Rudeness and rowdyism
were the rule. Drunkenness was as common, and as little considered, as
smoking is at the present time; there was no organized opposition to it
of any kind, except one little temperance society at Saratoga. There
were no sewers, and much of the water was drawn from putrid wells. Many
faces were pitted with small-pox. Cholera and yellow jack or strange
hunger-fevers cut wide swaths of death again and again among the
helpless people. There was no science, of course, and no sanitation, and
no medical knowledge except a medley of drastic measures which were apt
to be as dangerous as the disease.
The desperate struggle to survive appears to have been so intense that
there was little or no social sympathy. There was very little pity for
the pauper,--he was auctioned off to be half starved by the lowest
bidder; and for the criminal there was no feeling except the utmost
repulsion and abhorrence. It was found, for instance, in 1809, that in
the jail in New York there were seventy-two women, white and black, in
one chairless, bedless room, all kept in order by a keeper with a whip,
and fed like cattle from a tub of mush, some eating with spoons and some
with cups and some with their unwashed hands. And the men's room of that
jail, says this report, "is worse than the women's."
Also, in 1809, the chronic quantity of misery had been terribly
augmented by the Embargo,--that most ruinous invention of President
Jefferson, whereby American ships were swept from the sea, with a loss
to capital of twelve millions a year, and a loss to labor of thirty
thousand places of employment. According to this amazing act of
political folly, every market-boat sailing from New Jersey to New
York--every sailboat or canoe--had to give bail to the federal
government before it dared to leave the dock.
Whatever flimsy little structure of industry had been built up in thirty
years of independence, was thrown prostrate by this Embargo. A hundred
thousand men stood on the streets with helpless hands, begging for work
or bread. The jails were jammed with debtors,--1,300 in New York alone.
The newspapers were overrun by bankruptcy notices. The coffee-houses
were empty. The ships lay mouldering at the docks. In those
hand-to-mouth days there was no piled-up reserve of food or wealth,--no
range of towering wheat-banks at every port; and the seaboard cities lay
for a time as desolate as though they had been ravaged by a pestilence.
In that darkest year the hardscrabble little republic learned and
remembered one of its most important lessons,--the fact that liberty and
independence are not enough. Here it was, an absolutely free
nation,--_the only free civilized country in the world_,--and yet as
miserable and poor and hungry as though it were a mere province of a
European empire. So, by degrees, there came a change in the American
point of view,--a swing from politicalism to industrialism. The mass of
the people were now surfeited with oratory and politics and war. They
began to settle down to hard facts and hard work. Instead of declaiming
about the rights of man, they began to build roads and weave cloth and
organize stock companies. Slowly they came to realize that a second
Revolution must be wrought,--a Revolution that would enable them to
write a Declaration of Independence against Hunger and Hardship and Hand
Labor.
Up to the year 1809 the chief topics of interest in American
legislatures and grocery stores were the blockades, the Embargo, the
treaties, the badness of Napoleon, the blunders of Jefferson, and the
rudeness of England and France. But after that year the chief topics of
interest came to be of a wholly different sort. They were such as the
tariff, the currency, the building of factories and canals, the opening
of public lands, the problem of slavery, and the development of the
West. The hardy, victorious little nation began to talk less and work
more; and so by a natural evolution of thought the era of George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson came to an end, and the era of Robert
Fulton and Peter Cooper and Cyrus Hall McCormick was in its dawn.
From 1810 to 1820 there was a rush to the land. Twenty million acres
were sold, in most cases for two dollars an acre. Thousands of men who
had been sailors turned their backs on the sea and learned to till the
soil. Town laborers, too, whose wages had been fifty cents a day,
tramped westward along the Indian trails and seized upon scraps of land
that lay ownerless. Nine out of ten Americans began to farm with the
utmost energy and perseverance,--_but with what tools?_ With the wooden
plow, the sickle, the scythe, and the flail, the same rude hand-labor
tools that the nations of antiquity had tried to farm with,--the tools
of failure and slavery and famine.
Such was the predicament of this republic for the first seventy-five
years of its life. It could not develop beyond the struggle for food. It
was chained to the bread-line. It could not feed itself. Not even
nine-tenths of its people could produce enough grain to satisfy its
hunger. Again and again, until 1858, wheat had to be imported by this
nation of farmers. So, as we now look back over those basic years, from
the summit of the twentieth century, we can see how timely an event it
was that in the dark year 1809 the inventor of the Reaper was born.