THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER
Not far from the McCormick homestead was the "Old Field School," built
of logs and with a part of one of the upper logs cut out to provide a
window. Here the boy Cyrus sat on a slab bench and studied five books as
though they were the only books in the world,--Murray's Grammar,
Dilworth's Arithmetic, Webster's Spelling Book, the Shorter Catechism,
and the Bible.
He was a strong-limbed, self-contained, serious-natured boy, always
profoundly intent upon what he was doing. Even at the age of fifteen he
was inventive. One winter morning he brought to school a most elaborate
map of the world, showing the two hemispheres side by side. First he had
drawn it in ink upon paper, then pasted the paper upon linen, and hung
it upon two varnished rollers. This map, which is still preserved,
reveals a remarkable degree of skill and patience; and the fact that a
mere lad could conceive of and create such a map was a week's wonder in
the little community. "That boy," declared the teacher, "is beyond me."
At about this time he undertook to do a man's work in the reaping of the
wheat, and here he discovered that to swing a cradle against a field of
grain under a hot summer sun was of all farming drudgeries the severest.
Both his back and his brain rebelled against it. One thing at least he
could do,--he could make a smaller cradle, that would be easier to
swing; and he did this, whittling away in the evening in the little log
workshop.
"Cyrus was a natural mechanical genius," said an old laborer who had
worked on the McCormick farm. "He was always trying to invent
something." "He was a young man of great and superior talents," said a
neighbor. At eighteen he studied the profession of surveying, and made a
quadrant for his own use. This is still preserved, and bears witness to
his good workmanship. From this time until his twenty-second year, there
is nothing of exceptional interest recorded of him. He had grown to be
a tall, muscular, dignified young man. The neighbors, in later years,
remembered him mainly because he was so well dressed on Sundays, in
broadcloth coat and beaver hat, and because of his fine treble voice as
he led the singing in the country church.
Even as a youth he was absorbed in his inventions and business projects.
He had no time for gayeties. In a letter written from Kentucky to a
cousin, Adam McChesney, in 1831, he says: "Mr. Hart has two fine
daughters, right pretty, very smart, and as rich probably as you would
wish; but alas! I have other business to attend to."
[Illustration: NEW PROVIDENCE CHURCH, ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA]
Ever since Cyrus was a child of seven, it had been the most ardent
ambition of his father to invent a Reaper. He had made one and tried it
in the harvest of 1816, but it was a failure. It was a fantastic
machine, pushed from behind by two horses. A row of short curved sickles
were fastened to upright posts, and the grain was whirled against them
by revolving rods. It was highly ingenious, but the sinewy grain merely
bunched and tangled around its futile sickles; and the poor old
Reaper that would not reap was hauled off the field, to become one of
the jokes of the neighborhood.
This failure did not dishearten Robert McCormick. He persevered with
Scotch-Irish tenacity, but in secret. Hurt by the jests of the
neighbors, he worked thenceforward with the door of his workshop locked,
or at night. He hid his Reaper, too, upon a shelf inside the workshop.
"He allowed no one to see what he was doing, except his sons," said
Davis McCormick, who is now the only living person in the neighborhood
with a memory that extends back to that early period. "Yes," said this
lone octogenarian, "Robert McCormick was a good man, a true Christian;
and he worked for years to make a Reaper. He always kept his plans to
himself, and he told his wife that if visitors came to the house, she
should send one of the children to fetch him, and not allow the visitors
to come to his workshop."
By the early Summer of 1831, Robert McCormick had so improved his Reaper
that he gave it a trial in a field of grain. Again it was a failure. It
did cut the grain fairly well, but flung it in a tangled heap. As much
as this had been done before by other machines, and it was not enough.
To cut the grain was only one-half of the problem; the other half of the
problem, which up to this time no one had solved, was how to properly
handle and deliver the grain after it was cut.
[Illustration: FACSIMILES FROM MANUSCRIPT BY MR. McCORMICK GIVING HIS
OWN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE REAPER]
By this time Cyrus had become as much of a Reaper enthusiast as his
father. Also, he had been studying out the reasons for his father's
failure, and working out in his mind a new plan of construction. How
this _new plan_ was slowly moulded into shape by his creative fancy is
now told for the first time. A manuscript, written by Cyrus H. McCormick
himself, and which has not hitherto been made public, gives a complete
description of the process of thought by which he became the inventor of
the first practical Reaper. This account, it may be said in explanation,
was written by Mr. McCormick shortly before the Chicago fire of 1871. It
was to be published at that time, and was in type when the fire came and
left not a vestige of the printery. The original manuscript was
preserved; but the labor of rebuilding his factory prevented him from
carrying out his original design. He wholly forgot his authorship in the
troubles of his city; and so his own story of his invention lay
untouched among the private papers of the family for thirty-eight years.
"Robert McCormick," says this document, "being satisfied that his
principle of operation could not succeed, laid aside and abandoned the
further prosecution of his idea." He had labored for fifteen years to
make a Reaper that would reap, and he had failed.
At this point Cyrus took up the work that his father had reluctantly
abandoned. He had never seen or heard of any Reaper experiments except
those of his father; but he believed he saw a better way, and "devoted
himself most laboriously to the discovery of a _new principle of
operation_."
He showed his originality at the outset by beginning where his father
and all other Reaper inventors had left off,--with the cutting of grain
that lay in a fallen and tangled mass. He faced the problem worst end
first. The Reaper that would cut such grain, he believed, must first
separate the grain that is to be cut from the grain that is left
standing. It must have at the end of its knife a curved arm--a
_divider_. This idea was simple, but in the long history of harvesting
grain no one had thought of it before.
Next, in order to cut this snarled and prostrate grain without missing
any of it, the knife must have two motions: its forward motion, as drawn
by the horses, and also a slashing sideways motion of its own. How was
this to be done? McCormick's first thought was to cut the grain with a
whirling wheel-knife, but this plan presented too many new difficulties.
Suddenly the idea came to him--why not have a straight blade, with a
back and forward motion of its own? This was the birth-idea of the
_reciprocating blade_, which has been used to this day on all
grain-cutting machines. It was not, like the divider, a wholly new
conception; but Cyrus McCormick conceived it independently, and did more
than any one else to establish it as the basic feature of the Reaper.
The third problem was the supporting of the grain while it was being
cut, so that the knife would not merely flatten it to the ground.
McCormick solved this by placing a row of _fingers_ at the edge of the
blade. These fingers projected a few inches, in such a way that the
grain was caught and held in position to be cut. The shape of these
fingers was afterwards much improved, to prevent wet grain from clogging
the slit in which the knife slid back and forth.
A fourth device was still needed to lift up and straighten the grain
that had fallen. This was done by a simple revolving _reel_, such as
fishermen use for the drying of their nets. Several of the abortive
Reapers that had been tried elsewhere had possessed some sort of a reel;
but McCormick made his much larger than any other, so that no grain was
too low to escape it.
The fifth factor in this assembling of a Reaper was the _platform_, to
catch the cut grain as it fell; and from which the grain was to be raked
off by a man who walked alongside of it. The sixth was the idea of
putting the shafts on the outside, or stubble side, of the Reaper,
making it a _side-draught_, instead of a "push" machine. And the
seventh and final factor was the building of the whole Reaper upon one
big _driving-wheel_, which carried the weight and operated the reel and
cutting-blade. The grain-side end of the blade was at first supported by
a wooden runner, and later--the following year--by a small wheel.
[Illustration: FIRST PRACTICAL REAPING MACHINE
Built and used by Cyrus Hall McCormick on Walnut Grove Farm, Va., in
1831]
Such was the making of the first practical Reaper in the history of the
world. It was as clumsy as a Red River ox-cart; but _it reaped_. It was
made on right lines. The "new principle" that the youth McCormick
laboriously conceived in the little log workshop became the basic type
of a wholly new machine. It has never been displaced. Since then there
have been 12,000 patents issued for reaper and mower inventions; but not
one of them has overthrown the type of the first McCormick Reaper. Not
one of the seven factors that he assembled has been thrown aside; and
the most elaborate self-binder of to-day is a direct descendant of the
crude machine that was thus created by a young Virginian farmer in
1831.
The young inventor toiled "laboriously," he says, to complete his Reaper
in time for the harvest of 1831. He was very nearly too late, but a
small patch of wheat was left standing at his request; and one day in
July, with no spectators except his parents and his excited brothers and
sisters, Cyrus put a horse between the shafts of his Reaper, and drove
against the yellow grain. The reel revolved and swept the gentle wheat
downwards upon the knife. Click! Click! Click! The white steel blade
shot back and forth. The grain was cut. It fell upon the platform in a
shimmering golden swath. From here it was raked off by a young laborer
named John Cash. It was a roughly done specimen of reaping, no doubt.
The reel and the divider worked poorly. But for a preliminary test it
was a magnificent success. Here, at last, was a Reaper that reaped, the
first that had ever been made in any country.
The scene of this first "reaping by horse-power" was then, and is
to-day, one of unusual beauty. The field is near by the farm-house,
rolling in several undulations to the rim of a winding little rivulet.
In the centre of the field is a single tree, a wide-branched white oak,
which was probably born before the first colonists arrived at Jamestown.
And in the background, not more than two miles distant, rise the tall
and jagged crags of the Blue Ridge, twelve sharp peaks flung high from
deep ravines, on which the lights and shades are incessantly
changing,--a most impressive staging for the first act of the drama of
the Reaper.
This McCormick farm, having 600 acres of land, is now owned by the
McCormick family. The whole region has changed but little. Once, and
once only, the great noisy outside world surged into this quiet
valley,--when a Union army under General Butler clattered through it,
burning and destroying, and so close to the McCormick homestead that the
blue uniforms could be seen from its front windows. Doubtless, when
farmers have time to take a proper pride in the history of their own
profession, they will visit the McCormick farm as a spot of historic
interest,--the place where the New Agriculture was born. It is no longer
a difficult place to reach, as it is now possible to lunch to-day in
either Chicago or New York and to-morrow in the same comfortable red
brick farm-house that sheltered the McCormicks in 1831.
Several days after the advent of the Reaper on the home farm, Cyrus
McCormick had improved its reel and divider, and was ready for a public
exhibition at the near-by village of Steele's Tavern. Here, with two
horses, he cut six acres of oats in an afternoon, a feat which was
attested in court in 1848 by his brothers William and Leander, and also
by three of the villagers, John Steele, Eliza Steele, and Dr. N. M.
Hitt. Such a thing at that time was incredible. It was equal to the work
of six laborers with scythes, or twenty-four peasants with sickles. It
was as marvellous as though a man should walk down the street carrying a
dray-horse on his back.
The next year, 1832, Cyrus McCormick came out with his Reaper into what
seemed to him "the wide, wide world." He gave a public exhibition near
the little town of Lexington, which lay eighteen miles south of the
farm. Fully one hundred people were present--several political leaders
of local fame, farmers, professors, laborers, and a group of negroes who
frolicked and shouted in uncomprehending joy.
At the start, it appeared as though this new contraption of a machine,
which was unlike anything else that human eyes had ever seen, was to
prove a grotesque failure. The field was hilly, and the Reaper jolted
and slewed so violently that John Ruff, the owner of the field, made a
loud protest.
"Here! This won't do," he shouted. "Stop your horses. You are rattling
the heads off my wheat."
[Illustration: THE FIELD ON WHICH THE FIRST McCORMICK REAPER WAS TRIED,
WALNUT GROVE FARM, VIRGINIA]
This was a hard blow to the young farmer-inventor. Several laborers, who
were openly hostile to the machine as their rival in the labor market,
began to jeer with great satisfaction. "It's a humbug," said one. "Give
me the old cradle yet, boys," said another. These men were hardened and
bent and calloused with the drudgery of harvesting. They worked twelve
and fourteen hours a day for less than a nickel an hour. But they were
as resentful toward a Reaper as the drivers of stage-coaches were to
railroads, or as the hackmen of to-day are towards automobiles.
At this moment of apparent defeat, a man of striking appearance, who had
been watching the floundering of the Reaper with great interest, came to
the rescue.
"I'll give you a fair chance, young man," he said. "That field of wheat
on the other side of the fence belongs to me. Pull down the fence and
cross over."
This friend in need was the Honorable William Taylor, who was several
years later a candidate for the governorship of Virginia. His offer was
at once accepted by Cyrus McCormick, and as the second field was fairly
level, he laid low six acres of wheat before sundown. This was no more
than he had done in 1831, but on this occasion he had conquered a larger
and more incredulous audience.
After the sixth acre was cut, the Reaper was driven with great acclaim
into the town of Lexington and placed on view in the court-house square.
Here it was carefully studied by a Professor Bradshaw of the Lexington
Female Academy, who finally announced in a loud and emphatic voice,
"This--machine--is worth--a hundred--thousand--dollars." This praise,
from "a scholar and a gentleman," as McCormick afterwards called him,
was very encouraging. And still more so was the quiet word of praise
from Robert McCormick, who said, "It makes me feel proud to have a son
do what I could not do."
Of all who were present on that memorable summer day, not one is now
alive. Neither in Lexington nor in Staunton--the towns that lay on
either side of the McCormick farm--can we find any one who saw the
Reapers of 1831 and 1832. But among those who testified at various
lawsuits that they had seen the Lexington Reaper operate were Colonel
James McDowell, Colonel John Bowyer, Colonel Samuel Reed, Colonel A. T.
Barclay, Dr. Taylor, William Taylor, John Ruff, John W. Houghawout, John
Steele, James Moore, and Andrew Wallace. There was an old lady, also, in
1885, Miss Polly Carson, who told how she had seen the Reaper hauled
along the road by two horses, which, she said, "had to be led by a
couple of darkies, because they were scared to death by the racket of
the machine." And she expressed the general unbelief of that day, very
likely, by saying, "I thought it was a right smart curious sort of a
thing, but that it wouldn't come to much."
Cyrus McCormick was far from being the first to secure a Reaper patent.
He was the forty-seventh. Twenty-three others in Europe and twenty-three
in the United States had invented machines of varying inefficiency; but
there was not one of these which could have been improved into the
proper shape. Without any exception, the rival manufacturers who rose up
in later years to fight McCormick did him the homage of copying his
Reaper; and certainly none of them attempted to offer for sale any type
of machine that was invented prior to 1831.
A careful study of the pre-McCormick Reapers reveals one fault common to
all,--they were made by theorists, to cut ideal grain in ideal fields.
Some of them, if grain always grew straight and was perfectly willing
to be cut, might have been fairly useful. They assuredly might have
succeeded if grain grew in a parlor. But to cut actual grain in actual
fields was another matter, and quite beyond their power. None of them,
apparently, knew the fundamental difference between a Reaper and a
mower. They did not observe that grain is easy to cut but hard to
handle, while grass is hard to cut and easy to handle; and they
persisted in the assumption that grain could be reaped by a mower.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF BLACKSMITH SHOP IN WHICH C. H. McCORMICK
BUILT HIS FIRST REAPER]
These inventors who failed, but who doubtless blazed the way by their
failures to the final success of McCormick, were not, as he was, a
practical farmer on rough and hilly ground. One was a clergyman, who
devised a six-wheel chariot, with many pairs of scissors, and which was
to be pushed by horses and steered by a rudder that in rough ground
would jerk a man's arm out of joint. A second of these inventors was a
sailor, who experimented with a few stalks of straight grain stuck in
gimlet holes in his workshop floor. A third was an actor, who had
built a Reaper that would cut artificial grain on the stage. A fourth
was a school-teacher, a fifth a machinist, and so on. In no instance can
we find that any one of these pre-McCormick inventors was a farmer, who
therefore knew what practical difficulties had to be overcome.
The farmers, on the other hand, thought first of these difficulties and
scoffed at the parlor inventors. The editor of the "Farmer's Register"
spoke the opinion of most farmers of that time when he said that "an
insurmountable difficulty will sometimes be found to the use of
reaping-machines in the state of the growing crops, which may be twisted
and laid flat in every possible direction. A whole crop may be ravelled
and beaten down by high winds and heavy rains in a single day."
One of the basic reasons, therefore, for the success of Cyrus McCormick
was the fact that he was not a parlor inventor. He was primarily a
farmer. He knew what wheat was and how it grew. And his first aim in
making a reaper was not to produce a mechanical curiosity, nor to
derive a fortune from the sale of his patent, but to cut the grain on
his father's farm.
So far as the pre-McCormick inventors are concerned, the whole truth
about them seems to be that a few invented fractional mowers or reapers
that were fairly good as far as they went, and that most of them
invented nothing that became of any lasting value. Nine-tenths of them
were pathfinders in the sense that they showed what ought _not_ to be
done.
Very little attention would have been given them had it not been for the
persistent effort made by rival manufacturers to detract from
McCormick's reputation as an inventor. This they did in a wholly
impersonal manner, of course, so that they should not be obliged to pay
him royalties, and because his prestige as the original inventor of the
Reaper enabled him to outsell them among the farmers.
But now that the competition of Reaper manufacturers has been tempered
by consolidation, the time has arrived to do justice to Cyrus McCormick
as the inventor of the Reaper. The stock phrase,--"He was less of an
inventor than a business man," which was so widely used against him
during his lifetime, ought now in all fairness to be laid aside. The
fact is, as we have seen, that he was schooled as a boy into an
inventive habit of mind; and that before his invention of the Reaper, he
had devised a new grain-cradle, a hillside plow, and a self-sharpening
plow. There is abundant corroborative evidence in the letters which he
wrote to his father and brothers, instructing them to "make the divider
and wheel post longer," to "put the crank one inch farther back," and so
forth. Also, in the will of Robert McCormick, there is a clause
authorizing the executor to pay a royalty to Cyrus of fifteen dollars
apiece on whatever machines were sold by the family during that season,
showing that the father, who of all men was in the best position to
know, regarded Cyrus as the inventor.
Of all the manufacturers who fought McCormick in the patent suits of
early days, three only have survived to see the passing of the McCormick
Centenary--Ralph Emerson, C. W. Marsh, and William N. Whiteley. In
response to a question as to Cyrus McCormick's place as an inventor,
Mr. Whiteley said: "McCormick invented the divider and the practical
reel; and he was the first man to make the Reaper a success in the
field." Mr. Marsh said: "He was a meritorious inventor, although he
combined the ideas of other men with his own; and he produced the first
practical side-delivery machine in the market." And Mr. Emerson said:
"The enemies of Cyrus H. McCormick have said that he was not an
inventor, but I say that he was an inventor of eminence."
Thus it appears that the invention of the Reaper was not in any sense
unique; it came about by an evolutionary process such as produced all
other great discoveries and inventions. First come the dreamers, the
theorists, the heroic innovators who awaken the world's brain upon a new
line of thought. Then come the pioneers who solve certain parts of the
problem and make suggestions that are of practical value. And then, in
the fulness of time, comes one masterful man who is more of a doer than
a dreamer, who works out the exact combination of ideas to produce the
result, and establishes the new product as a necessary part of the
equipment of the whole human family.
Cyrus Hall McCormick invented the Reaper. He did more--he invented the
business of making Reapers and selling them to the farmers of America
and foreign countries. He held preëminence in this line, with scarcely a
break, until his death; and the manufacturing plant that he founded is
to-day the largest of its kind. Thus, it is no more than an exact
statement of the truth to say that he did more than any other member of
the human race to abolish the famine of the cities and the drudgery of
the farm--to feed the hungry and straighten the bent backs of the
world.