McCORMICK AS A MANUFACTURER
"If I had given up business, I would have been dead long ago," said
Cyrus H. McCormick in 1884, only a few weeks before his death; and this
statement was by no means an exaggeration. His business was his life. It
was not a definite, walled-off fraction of his life, as with most men.
It was the whole of it. His business was his work, his play, his
religion, his grand opera, his education. There was business even in his
love-letters and his dreams.
McCormick believed in business. He had the sturdy pride of a "John
Halifax, Gentleman." He never wanted to be anything else but a worker.
He never wasted a breath in wishing for an easier life. He worked hard
for twenty-five years after he had made his fortune, because he believed
in work and commerce and the reciprocities of trade. He was never
dazzled nor deflected for a moment by the pomps and pageantries of the
world, and for the glory that springs from war he had very little
respect. In 1847, when offering a place in his factory to his brother
Leander, he writes, "This will be as honorable an enterprise as to go to
Mexico to be shot at." And in later life, in a conversation with General
Lilley, of Virginia, he said, "I expect to die in the harness, because
this is not the world for rest. This is the world for work. In the next
world we will have the rest."
In the vast mass of letters, papers, etc., left by Mr. McCormick, there
is one mention, and only one, of recreation. After his first visit to
the West, in 1844, he wrote to one of his brothers and described a
hunting trip in which he shot three prairie chickens near Beloit. But
during the rest of his life, he was too busy for sport. His energy was
the wonder of his friends and the despair of his employees. His brain
was not quick. It was not marvellously keen nor marvellously intuitive.
But it was at work every waking moment, like a great engine that never
tires.
"He was the most laborious worker I ever saw," said one of his
secretaries. One of the words that annoyed him most was _to-morrow_. He
wanted things done to-day. With regard to every important piece of work,
it was his instinct to "do it now." He abhorred delay and dawdling. Even
as a boy, when sent on an errand, he would set off upon a run. Walking
was too slow. And although he was in France on many occasions, the
French phrase that he knew best was "_Depechez-vous_."
His plan of work, so far as he could be said to have a plan, was
this--_One Thing at a Time, and the Hardest Thing First_. He followed
the line of _most_ resistance. If the hardest thing can be done, he
reasoned, all the rest will follow. And as for all work that was merely
routine, he left as much as possible of it to others.
He was not an organizer so much as a creator and a pioneer. His problem
was not like that which troubles the business men of to-day. He was not
grappling with the evils of competition, nor with the higher questions
of efficiency and "community of interest." He was making a business that
had not existed. He was clearing away obstacles that are now wholly
forgotten. Consequently, as each new difficulty appeared, he had to
consider it in all its details. He could not pass it over to Lieutenant
Number One or Lieutenant Number Two.
McCormick was like a general who was leading an army into an unknown
country rather than like the business man of the twentieth century, who
can travel by time-table and schedule. When an obstacle blocked his
path, it had to be removed; and until it was out of the way, nothing
else mattered. Thus it was impossible for McCormick to have business
hours. Once his mind had applied itself to a problem, he cared nothing
for clocks and watches. Sometimes he would work on through the night,
hour after hour, until the gray light of another day shone in the
window. On all these arduous occasions, he had no idea of time, and he
would allow no distractions nor interruptions. So rigid was this grasp
of his mind that if his body rebelled and he fell asleep, he would
invariably when he woke take up the matter in hand at the exact point at
which it had been left. Not even sleep could detach his mind from a
task that was unfinished.
When anything was going well, he let it alone. As soon as his factory
was in good running order, he gave it little attention. It was managed
first by his brothers, William and Leander, and afterwards by such
thoroughly competent men as Charles Spring and E. K. Butler. The work
that he chose to do himself was invariably new business. He cared little
for the mere making of money. The success always pleased him much more
than the profit. He was at heart a builder, and therefore when he had
finished one structure, he moved off and began another.
It is a remarkable fact that as an investor, also, he had no interest in
businesses that were already established. Stocks were offered to him,
stocks that were safe and sure, but he bought none of them. The money
that he invested outside of his own business was put into pioneering
enterprises. He bought land in Chicago and Arizona. He opened up gold
mines in South Carolina and Montana. He supplied the capital for a
company which set out to bring mahogany from San Domingo. He invested
$55,000 in the Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean Railroad, an ambitious attempt to
join the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by rail, which was begun in 1879
and came to an inglorious end several years later. And he was one of
that daring group of Americans who planned and financed the Union
Pacific Railway--the first road that really joined sea to sea and
reached to the farthest acre in the West.
[Illustration: McCORMICK REAPER CUTTING ON A SIDE HILL IN PENNSYLVANIA]
In all these undertakings he lost money, except in the instances of
Chicago real estate and the Union Pacific. By 1883 he had several
hundred thousand dollars invested in gold mines, and yet had not
received one dollar of profit. It was the fascination of pioneering that
had lured him. He saw no charm, as the gambler does, in the risk itself.
The Wall Street game he regarded as child's play. The thing that gripped
him was the developing of new material resources--the colonization of
new lands--the mastery of whatever is hostile to the welfare of the
human race.
Another McCormick trait, which is not usually found in men who have the
pioneering instinct, was _Thoroughness_. He never said, "This is good
enough," or "Half a loaf is better than no bread." He wanted what was
_right_ whether it came to him or went from him. He never believed in a
ninety per cent success. He wanted par. Once his mind was fully aroused
upon a subject, there was no detail too petty for him to consider. He
labored hard to be correct in matters that appeared trifling to other
men. Even in his letters to members of his family, the sentences were
carefully formed, and there were no misspelled words. Once he gave
advice to a younger brother on the importance of spelling words
correctly. "You should carry a dictionary, as I do," he said.
All slovenliness, whether of mind or body, he abhorred. To take thought
about a matter and to do it as it ought to be done, was to him a matter
of character as well as of business. When a telegram was submitted to
him for approval, it was his custom to draw a circle around the
superfluous words. This was a little lesson to his managers on the
importance of brevity and exactness. He insisted that clocks and watches
should be correct, and in his later life carried a fine repeater which
could strike the hour in the night and in which he took an almost boyish
pride. Once, when he had been given the management of a political
campaign in Chicago, he created consternation among the politicians by
the rigid way in which he supervised the expense accounts. "This will
never do," he said. "Things are at loose ends." If a bill was ten cents
too much it went back. One bill for $15 was held up for a week because
it was not properly drawn. The amazed politicians could not understand
such a man,--who would readily sign a check for $10,000, and put it in
the campaign treasury, and yet make trouble about the misplacing of a
dime of other people's money.
McCormick demanded absolute honesty from his employees. One young man
lost his chance of promotion because he was seen to place a two-cent
stamp, belonging to the firm, on one of his personal letters. But once
he had tested a man, and found him to be pure gold, he trusted him
completely. A new employee would be pelted with questions and complete
answers insisted upon. This was often a harsh ordeal. It was irritating
to a man of independent spirit, until he realized that it was a sort of
discipline and examination.
McCormick was always an optimist. He was not one of those who said, "Let
well enough alone."
He never endured unsatisfactory business conditions. When he found that
the freight charges on Reapers from Virginia to Cincinnati were too
high, he arranged to have Reapers built in Cincinnati. When he found
that other manufacturers were apt to be careless as to the quality of
their materials, he built a factory of his own. Again and again in the
course of his life, came the temptation to be satisfied with what he had
already achieved. But he could not endure the thought of being beaten.
Instead of being content and complacent, he was far more likely to be
planning a wholly new policy, on larger lines.
A daring proposition from a competent man always caught his attention.
Once, when he was sitting in his office, he heard E. K. Butler, who was
at that time the head of his sales department, protest that the factory
was not making as many machines as it should. "It is sheer nonsense,"
said Butler, "to say that the factory is producing as much as it can. If
I were at the head of it, I could double the output with very little
extra expense." Most employers would have regarded this sort of talk as
mere boastfulness, but not so McCormick. He knew that Butler was a most
adaptable and competent man, so he called him into the office and
straightway appointed him to be the superintendent of the factory.
Butler was thus put upon his mettle. He went out to the factory resolved
that McCormick's confidence in him should not be overthrown. He routed
the wastes and inefficiencies, and keyed the whole plant up to such a
pitch that, in a remarkably short period, he had made good his boast and
doubled the output without hiring an extra man.
But the preëminent quality in the character of Cyrus McCormick was not
his power of concentration, nor his spirit of pioneering, nor his
thoroughness. It was his strength of will--his _Tenacity_. This was the
motif of his life.
He was not at all a shrewd accumulator of millions, as many have
imagined him. He had not an iota of craft and cunning. Neither was he a
financier, in the modern sense. It would be nearer the truth to say that
he was a farmer-manufacturer, of simple nature but tremendous
resolution, whose one overmastering life-purpose was to teach the wheat
nations of the world to use his harvesting machinery.
"The exhibition of his powerful will was at times actually terrible,"
said one of his lawyers. "If any other man on this earth ever had such a
will, certainly I have not heard of it."
A drizzle of little annoyances and little matters always irritated him,
but he could stand up alone against a sea of adversity without a
whimper. In fact, he would sooner be asked for a thousand dollars than
for fifty cents. He would storm over the loss of a carpet slipper and
smile blandly at the loss of a lawsuit. "He made more fuss over a
pin-prick," said one of his valets, "than he did over a surgical
operation." He disliked the petty odds and ends of life. His mind was
too massive to adapt itself readily to small matters. But when a great
difficulty came in view, he rose and went at it with a sort of stern
satisfaction and religious zeal. He was so confident of his own
strength, and of the justice of his cause, that it was almost a joy to
him to--
"Breast the blows of circumstance,
And grasp the skirts of happy chance,
And grapple with his evil star."
A defeat never meant anything more to McCormick than a delay. Often, the
harder he was thrown down the higher he would rebound. Again and again
he was thwarted and blocked. In the race of competition, there was a
time when he was beaten by Whiteley, and there was a time when he was
beaten by Deering. Most of his lawsuits were decided against him. But no
one ever saw him crushed or really disheartened. In 1877, after he had
made a long hard struggle to become a United States Senator, the news
came to him that he was defeated. "Well," he said, "that's over. What
next?"
[Illustration: REAPER DRAWN BY OXEN IN ALGERIA]
Usually, McCormick was at his best when the situation was at its worst.
His Titanic work immediately after the great Chicago Fire of 1871 is the
most striking evidence of this. He had been living at the corner of
Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue, in New York City, for four years before
the Fire; but he was in Chicago during the greatest of all Illinois
disasters. In one day of fire and terror he saw his city reduced to a
waste of ashes. It was no longer a city. It was two thousand acres of
desolation. He was himself in the midst of the fire-fighting. When his
wife, in response to his telegraphic message, came to him in Chicago two
days later, he met her wearing a half-burned hat and a half-burned
overcoat. His big factory, which was at that time making about 10,000
harvesters a year, was wholly destroyed. In a flash he found himself
without a city and without a business.
But McCormick never flinched. The arrival of a great difficulty was
always his cue. First he ascertained his wife's wishes. Did she wish
the factory to be rebuilt, or did she want him to retire from active
business life? She, thinking of her son, said--"Rebuild." At once
McCormick became the most buoyant and confident citizen in the ruined
city. His great spirit was aroused. He called up one of his attorneys
and sent him in haste to the docks to buy lumber. He telegraphed to his
agents to rush in as much money as they could collect. Every bank in the
city had been burned, so for a time this money was kept by the cashier
in a market basket, and carried at night to a private house. There was
one day as much as $24,000 in the basket. Before the cinders were cool,
McCormick had given orders to build a new factory, larger than the one
that had been burned down. More than this, he had also given orders that
his house in New York should be sold, and that a home should be
established in Chicago. Chicago was his city. He had seen it grow from
10,000 to 325,000. And in this hour of its distress he tossed aside all
other plans and gave Chicago all he had.
His unconquerableness gave heart to others. Several of the wealthiest
citizens, who had lost courage, rallied to the help of the city. One
merchant, who had lost his store, borrowed $100,000 from McCormick and
started again. And so McCormick became not only one of the main builders
of the first Chicago, but also of the second Chicago, which in less than
three years had become larger and finer than the city that was.
It was this steel-fibred tenacity that was the main factor in the
success of McCormick, whether we consider him as a manufacturer or as a
great American. It enabled him to establish the perilous industry of
making harvesting machines--a business so complex and many-sided that
out of every twenty manufacturers who set out to emulate McCormick, only
one survives to-day. It enabled McCormick to hold his own in spite of
adverse litigation, the hostility of Congress, the rivalry of other
inventors, and the calamity of the Great Fire. It was so remarkable, and
so productive of good to his country and to himself, that he will always
remain one of the creative and heroic figures in the early industrial
history of the United States.