CYRUS H. McCORMICK: INVENTOR OF THE REAPER
_"I expect to die in harness, because this is not the world for
rest. This is the world for work. In the next world we will have
the rest."_--Cyrus H. McCormick.
It is hardly to be expected that those people who devoutly chant in a
million churches the fourth sentence of the Lord's Prayer should think
with gratitude of any other person than the Divine Giver of all Good.
Yet it is strange to reflect that although every schoolboy knows
something of the life of our least Poet Laureate, not one in ten
thousand could tell you the career of the man who responded in a
truly miraculous manner to the heartfelt, world-voiced matin of both
rich and poor, "Give us this day our daily bread."
Cyrus H. McCormick, the inventor of the reaping machine, was born in
the eventful year 1809. It was the birth year of Darwin and Tennyson,
of Mendelssohn, Gladstone, and Lincoln. He was born on Walnut Grove
Farm, amidst the mountains of Virginia, one hundred miles from the
sea. He came of that virile stock that has proved to be the main
strength of the Republic, that gave Washington thirty-nine of his
generals, three out of four members of his Cabinet, and three out
of the five judges of the Supreme Court--the Scots who migrated to
Ulster, and thence to the United States. Robert McCormick, the father
of Cyrus, was a fairly large farmer, and an inventor of no mean
ability. The little log workshop is still shown to the enquiring
tourist where father and son moulded and mended machinery on many a
rainy day. Indeed, we are told that the McCormick homestead was more
like a small factory than a farmer's home, so full was it of rural
industries--spinning and weaving, soap and shoes, butter-making and
bacon-curing. And it is more than likely that the ceaseless activity
of his wise and Celtic mother taught Cyrus the value of each moment
of time.
Ever since he was a child of seven it was his father's ambition to
invent a reaper. He made one, and tried it in the harvest of 1816, but
it proved a failure. It was a fantastic machine, pushed from behind
by two horses. It was highly ingenious, but it would not cut the corn,
and was hauled off the field to become one of the jokes of the
countryside. Hurt by the jests of his neighbours, he locked the door
of his workshop and toiled away at night. Early in the summer of 1831
he had so improved his reaper that he gave it another trial. Again it
failed. True, the machine cut the corn fairly well, but it flung it
on the ground in a tangled heap. Satisfied that there was something
radically wrong, Robert McCormick gave up the reaper after having
worked at it for over fifteen years.
At this point Cyrus took up the task which his father had reluctantly
abandoned. He showed his genius from the very start by adopting a new
principle of operation. First of all, he invented the divider to
separate the corn to be cut from the corn left standing. Next came the
reciprocating blade, and the fingers, the revolving reel, platform,
and side draught, and, lastly, the big driving wheel. One day late in
the month of July, in the summer of 1831, Cyrus put a horse between
the shafts of his reaper. With no spectators save his father and
mother, his brothers and sisters, he drove down to a patch of yellow
grain. To that little family circle it must have been a moment of
intense excitement. Click, click, click--the white blade shot to and
fro. What a shout of joy! The wheat is cut and falls upon the platform
in a golden, shimmering swathe!
Thus at the early age of twenty-two Cyrus had invented the first
practical reaper that the world had seen. And now began his nine
years' struggle with adversity, from which he emerged in triumph to
become the greatest manufacturer of harvesting machines that America
has produced. In order to obtain funds with which to manufacture
reapers he started to farm. But he soon found that it was impossible
to raise sufficient capital by this means. Near by was a large
deposit of iron ore, and he forthwith resolved to build a furnace and
make iron. He persuaded his father and the school teacher to become
his partners. For several years the furnace did fairly well, when,
suddenly, the price of iron fell. The McCormicks were bankrupt. Cyrus
gave up the farm, and stuck grimly to his reaper. One day the village
constable rode up to the farm door with a summons for a debt of
nine-teen dollars, but he was so impressed with the industry of the
McCormicks that he had not the heart to serve the notice. It was the
darkest hour before the dawn.
* * * * *
The same year (1840) a stranger rode in from the north and drew rein
in front of the little log workshop. He was a rough looking man with
the homely name of Abraham Smith, but to Cyrus he came as an angel
of light. He had come with fifty dollars in his pocket to buy a
reaper--the first that was ever sold. A short time later two other
farmers came on the same errand, and that summer three reaping
machines were working in the wheat-fields of America. In 1842
McCormick sold seven machines, and in 1844 fifty. The home farm had
now become a busy factory.
Three years later a friend said to him "Cyrus, why don't you go West
with your reaper, where the land is level and labour cheap?"
It was the call of the West.
He travelled over the boundless prairies, and was quick to see that
this great land-ocean was the natural home of the reaper. Straightway
he transferred his factory to Chicago--then, in 1847, a forlorn little
town of less than 10,000 souls. His business flourished. In the
great fire of 1871 his factory, which was then turning out 10,000
harvesters a year, was totally destroyed. At the word of his wife he
rebuilt it anew with amazing rapidity. And so we find that the tiny
workshop in the backwoods of Virginia has become the McCormick City
in the heart of Chicago. In the sixty-five years of its life this
manufactory has produced over 6,000,000 harvesting machines, and is
now pouring them out at the rate of over 7,000 per week. The McCormick
Company is now known as the International Harvester Company, and his
eldest son, Cyrus H. McCormick, is the President. The annual output is
75,000,000 dollars. It was the reaper that enabled the United States,
during the four years of the civil war, not only to feed the armies
in the field, but at the same time to export to foreign countries
200,000,000 bushels of wheat. And well might the savants of the French
Academy of Science say, when electing Cyrus McCormick a member, that
"he had done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living
man."
And now we must trace the evolution of the reaper from its origin on
the Walnut Grove Farm to the marvellous machine of to-day. For about
thirty years it remained practically unaltered in design, save that
seats had been added for the raker and the driver. It did no more than
cut the grain and leave it in loose bundles on the ground. It had
abolished the sickler and cradler, but there still remained the raker
and binder. Might it not be possible to do away with them also, and
leave only the driver? Such was the fascinating problem which now
confronted the inventor.
In the year 1852 a bedridden cripple called Jearum Atkins bought a
McCormick reaper, and had it placed outside his window. To while away
the weary hours he actually devised an attachment with two revolving
iron arms, which automatically raked off the cut grain from the
platform to the ground. It was a grotesque contrivance, and was
nicknamed by the farmers the "iron man." Nevertheless, this invention
stimulated the manufacture of self-rake reapers, and soon the American
farmer would buy no other kind. Thus part of the problem had been
solved. The raker was abolished. But there still remained the harder
task of supplanting the binder--the man or the woman who gathered up
the bundles of cut corn and bound them tightly together with a wisp
of straw into the sheaf.
And now another figure appears upon this ever-moving stage, a young
man by the name of Charles B. Withington. Born at Akron, Ohio, a year
before McCormick invented his reaper, this delicate youth was trained
by his father to be a watchmaker. At the age of fifteen, in order to
earn pocket-money, he went into the harvest field to bind corn. He
was not robust, and the hard, stooping labour under a hot sun would
sometimes bring the blood to his head in a hemorrhage. There were
times after the day's work was done when he was too weary to walk
home, and he would throw himself on the stubble to rest. At eighteen
he journeyed to the goldfields of California, drifted to Australia,
and in the year 1855 arrived back in Wisconsin with 3,000 dollars in
his belt. All this money he began to fritter away in trying to invent
a self-rake reaper. Suddenly, inspired by the articles of a rural
editor, who maintained that the binding of corn should be done by a
machine, Withington dropped his self-rake and went straight to work to
make a self-binder. He completed his first machine in 1872, but met
with much discouragement until, two years later, he came across
McCormick.
Their dramatic meeting is best told by Mr. Herbert M. Casson in his
interesting volume, entitled "Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and
Work."
"One evening in 1874 a tall man; with a box under his arm, walked
diffidently up the steps of the McCormick home in Chicago, and rang
the bell. He asked to see Mr. McCormick, and was shown into the
parlour, where he found Mr. McCormick, sitting, as usual, in a
large and comfortable chair.
"'My name is Withington,' said the stranger; I live in Janesville,
Wisconsin. I have here a model of a machine that will automatically
bind grain.'
"Now, it so happened that McCormick had been kept awake nearly the
whole of the previous night by a stubborn business problem. He
could scarcely hold his eyelids apart. And when Withington was in
the midst of his explanation, with the intentness of a born
inventor, Mr. McCormick fell fast asleep. At such a reception to
his cherished machine Withington lost heart. He was a gentle,
sensitive man easily rebuffed, and so, when McCormick aroused from
his nap, Withington had departed, and was on his way back to
Wisconsin. For a few seconds McCormick was uncertain as to whether
his visitor had been a reality or a dream. Then he awoke with a
start into instant action. A great opportunity had come to him, and
he had let it slip. He was at this time making self-rake reapers
and Marsh harvesters; but what he wanted--what every reaper
manufacturer wanted in 1871--was a self-binder. He at once called
one of his trusted workmen.
"'I want you to go to Janesville,' he said. Find a man named
Withington and bring him to me by the first train that comes back
to Chicago.'
"The next day Withington was brought back, and treated with the
utmost courtesy. McCormick studied his invention, and found it to
be a most remarkable mechanism. Two steel arms caught each bundle
of grain, whirled a wire tightly around it, fastened the two ends
together with a twist, cut it loose, and tossed it to the ground.
This self-binder was perfect in all its details--as neat and
effective a machine as could be imagined. McCormick was delighted.
At last, here was a machine that would abolish the binding of grain
by hand."
For six years all went well with the McCormick and Withington
self-binder. This wonderful wire-twisting machine was working
everywhere with clockwork precision, and was believed to be the best
that human ingenuity could devise. All at once the manufacturing world
was startled with the news that William Deering had made and sold
three thousand twine self-binders. Deering, by this dramatic move
became in a flash McCormick's most powerful competitor. He was not a
farmer's son, like the latter, being bred in the city and trained in a
factory. He had been a successful merchant at Maine, then left it to
enter the harvester trade. He staked his whole fortune on making twine
binders. He won, and McCormick was forced to follow in his wake. The
evolution of the reaper into the twine self-binder was an epoch-making
event in the agricultural world. It enormously increased the sales. In
1880, 60,000 reapers were sold; five years later the figures had risen
to 250,000. Since then, with the exception of the new knot-tying
device, there has been no real change in the reaper. It remains the
grandest of all agricultural machines, and one of the most astonishing
mechanisms ever devised by the brain of man.
McCormick died in 1884. In the span of his own life the reaper was
born and brought to perfection. He created it in a remote Virginian
village, and he lived to see his catalogue printed in twenty
languages, and to know that so long as the human race continues to eat
bread the sun will never set on the Empire of his reaper, for
somewhere, in every month in all the year, you will find the corn
white unto the harvest.
* * * * *
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Transcriber's Notes
All small caps formatted text has not been converted to ALL CAPS to
distinguish them from titles which were printed as all caps. The
birth year for Thomas William Coke is reported on Page 17 as 1752;
page 36 states "Coke died in 1842 at the age of eighty-eight"; and
Wikipedia reports Coke was born on 6 May 1754 and died 30 June 1842
(aged 88). So, the year of Coke's birth on page 17 should probably be
1754. Wikipedia shows that a gravestone has been placed on Mr. Tull's
resting place.
End of Project Gutenberg's Makers of Modern Agriculture, by William Macdonald