Chapter I: 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