Chapter 10 No.10

CYRUS HALL McCORMICK.

Cyrus Hall McCormick.

In the course of an argument before the Commissioner of Patents, in 1859, the late Reverdy Johnson declared that the McCormick reaper was worth $55,000,000 a year to this country, an estimate that was not disputed. At about the same time the late William H. Seward said that "owing to Mr. McCormick's invention the line of civilization moves westward thirty miles each year." Already the London Times, after ridiculing the McCormick reaper exhibited at the London World's Fair of 1851, as "a cross between an Astley (circus) chariot, a wheel-barrow, and a flying-machine," confessed, when the reaper had been tested in the fields, that it was "worth to the farmers of England the whole cost of this exhibition." Writing of this glorious success, Mr. Seward said: "So the reaper of 1831, as improved in 1845, achieved for its inventor a triumph which all then felt and acknowledged was not more a personal one than it was a national one. It was justly so regarded. No general or consul, drawn in a chariot through the streets of Rome by order of the Senate, ever conferred upon mankind benefits so great as he who thus vindicated the genius of our country at the World's Exhibition of Art in the metropolis of the British empire in 1851." In 1861, though declining to extend the patent for the reaper, the Commissioner of Patents, D.P. Holloway, paid the inventor this remarkable tribute: "Cyrus H. McCormick is an inventor whose fame, while he is yet living, has spread through the world. His genius has done honor to his own country, and has been the admiration of foreign nations, and he will live in the grateful recollection of mankind as long as the reaping-machine is employed in gathering the harvest." Nevertheless the extension of the patent of 1834, which act of justice would have given the inventor an opportunity to obtain an adequate reward for his work, was refused upon the extraordinary ground that "the reaper was of too great value to the public to be controlled by any individual." In other words, the benefit conferred by McCormick upon the country was too great to be paid for; therefore no effort should be made to pay for it. Finally, the French Academy of Sciences, when McCormick was elected to the Institute of France-an honor paid but to few Americans-mentioned the election as due to "his having done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man."

Farm where Cyrus H. McCormick was Born and Raised.

It is thus evident that the tremendous service done to the civilized world by the invention of the McCormick reaper was appreciated years ago. Yet it is improbable that the whole value of the invention was fully realized. To-day the McCormick works at Chicago turn out yearly, and have turned out for several years, more than one hundred thousand reapers and mowers. At a moderate estimate every McCormick reaper, and every reaper founded upon it and containing its essential features, saves the labor of six men during the ten harvest days of the year. The present number of reapers in operation to-day, all of them based upon the McCormick patents, is estimated at about two million, so that, counting a man's labor at $1 a day, here is a yearly saving of more than $100,000,000. The reaper thus stands beside the steam-engine and the sewing-machine as one of the most important labor-saving inventions of our time, relieving millions of men from the most arduous drudgery and increasing the world's wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars every year. It is some satisfaction to know that the inventor of the reaper lived to enjoy the fruits of his work. A remarkable man in every respect, his ingenuity, perseverance, courage under injustice, and generosity finally won him not only the material rewards that were his by right, but the esteem and honor of the civilized world.

Like Fulton and Morse, Cyrus Hall McCormick came of Scotch-Irish blood, a race marked by fixed purpose, untiring industry in carrying out that purpose, a strong sense of moral obligation, and an unswerving determination to do right by the light of conscience though the heavens fall. He was born on the 15th of February, 1809, at Walnut Grove, in Rockbridge County, Va., and was the eldest of eight children, six of whom lived to grow up. His father, Robert McCormick, in addition to farming, had workshops of considerable importance on his farm, as well as a saw-mill and grist-mill and smelting furnaces. In these workshops young Cyrus McCormick probably got his first love for mechanical devices. Robert McCormick was an inventor of no mean attainment. He devised and built a thresher, a hemp-breaker, some mill improvements, and in 1816 he made and tried a mechanical reaper. In those days so much of the farmer's hard labor was expended in swinging the scythe that it seems strange we have no record of more attempts to make a machine do the work. A schoolmaster named Ogle is said to have built a reaper in 1822, but, according to his own admission, it would not work. Bell, a Scotch minister, also contrived a reaping-machine that was tried in 1828. In the course of the subsequent patent litigation over the reaper the claims of these early inventors were made the most of by McCormick's opponents, but the courts of last resort invariably settled the question in McCormick's favor.

As a farmer boy, young Cyrus McCormick began his day's work in the fields at five o'clock. In winter he went to the Old Field School. During his boyhood he would watch his father's experiments and disappointments. His first attempt in the same direction was the construction, at the age of fifteen, of a harvesting-cradle by which he was enabled to keep up with an able-bodied workman. His first patented invention (1831) was a plough which threw alternate furrows on either side, being thus either a right-hand or left-hand plough. This was superseded in 1833 by an improved plough, also by McCormick, called the self-sharpening plough, which did excellent work. His father having worked long and unsuccessfully at a mechanical reaper, it was natural that young McCormick's mind should turn over the same problem from time to time, and his father's failures did not deter him, although Robert McCormick had suffered so much in mind and pocket through the impracticability of his reaper that he warned his son against wasting more time and money upon the dream. One martyr to mechanical progress was enough for the McCormick family. But the possibility of making a machine do the hard, hot work of the harvest-field had a fascination for the young man, and the more he studied the discarded reaping-machine made by his father in 1816, the more firmly he became convinced that while the principle of that device was wrong, the work could be done. In those days the development of the country really depended upon some better, cheaper way of harvesting. The land was fertile, and there was practically no end of it. But labor was scarce.

Exterior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built.

Cyrus McCormick's plough was a success that encouraged him to take hold of the more difficult problem of the reaper. He found that some device, such as his father's, would cut grain after a fashion, provided it was in perfect condition and stood up straight; the moment it became matted and tangled and beaten down by wind and rain the machine was useless. Other devices had been arranged whereby a fly-wheel armed with sickles slashed off the heads of the wheat, leaving the stalks; but here again such a machine would work only when the field was in prime condition. He determined that no device was of any value which would not cut grain as it might happen to stand, stalk and all. After months of labor in his father's shop, making every part of the machine himself, in both wood and iron, as he said, he turned out, in 1831, the first reaper that really cut an average field of wheat satisfactorily. Its three great essential features were those of the reaper of to-day-a vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the blade, a platform to receive the falling grain, and a divider to separate the grain to be cut from that to be left standing. This machine, drawn by horses, was tested in a field of six acres of oats, belonging to John Steele, within a mile of Walnut Grove. Its work astonished the neighboring farmers who gathered to witness the test. The problem of cutting standing grain by machinery had been solved.

There were, however, certain defects in the reaper which caused Cyrus McCormick not to put the machine on the market. All the cog-wheels were of wood. There was no place upon it for either the driver or the raker. The former rode on the near horse and the latter followed on foot, raking the grain from it as best he could. But it cut grain fast, and both father and son were so impressed by its possibilities as foreshadowed in even this crude affair, that for the next few years they devoted their time, money, and thoughts to it. Robert McCormick was as enthusiastic as his son, and he is rightly entitled to a share of the honor, for his invention of 1816 turned the attention of his son to the problem and pointed out the radical errors to be avoided. A year after its first trial, with certain improvements, the reaper cut fifty acres of wheat in so perfect and rapid a manner as to insure its practical value beyond all doubt. The self-restraint shown by McCormick in refusing to sell machines until he was satisfied with them shows the man. The patent was granted in 1834, but for six years he kept at work experimenting, changing, improving, during the short periods of each harvest. In a letter to the Commissioner of Patents, on file in the Patent Office, Mr. McCormick said: "From the experiment of 1831 until the harvest of 1840 I did not sell a reaper, although during that time I had many exhibitions of it, for experience proved to me that it was best for the public as well as for myself that no sales were made, as defects presented themselves that would render the reaper unprofitable in other hands. Many improvements were found necessary, requiring a great deal of thought and study. I was sometimes flattered, at other times discouraged, and at all times deemed it best not to attempt the sale of machines until satisfied that the reaper would succeed."

Interior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built.

About 1835 the McCormicks engaged in a partnership for the smelting of iron ore. The reaper, as a business pursuit, was yet in the distance, and the new iron industry offered large profits. The panic of 1837 swept away these hopes. Cyrus sacrificed all he had, even the farm given him by his father, to settle his debts, and his scrupulous integrity in this matter turned disaster into blessing, for it compelled him to take up the reaper with renewed energy. With the aid of his father and of his brothers, William and Leander, he began the manufacture of the machine in the primitive workshop at Walnut Grove, turning out less than fifty machines a year, all of them made under great disadvantages. The sickles were made forty miles away, and as there were no railroads in those days, the blades, six feet long, had to be carried on horseback. Neither was it easy, when once the machines were made, to get them to market. The first consignment sent to the Western prairies, in 1844, was taken in wagons from Walnut Grove to Scottsville, then down the canal to Richmond, Va.; thence by water to New Orleans, and then up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati.

The great West, with its vast prairies, was the natural market for the reaper. Upon the small farms of the East hand labor might still suffice for the harvest; in the West, where the farms were enormous and labor scarce, it was out of the question. Realizing that while his reaper was a luxury in Virginia, it was a necessity in Ohio and Illinois, Cyrus McCormick went to Cincinnati in the autumn of 1844 and began manufacturing. At the same time he made some valuable improvements and obtained a second patent. The reaper had become known and the inventor rode on horseback through Illinois and Wisconsin, obtaining farmers' orders for reapers, which he offered to A.C. Brown, of Cincinnati, as security for payment, if he would use his workshops for manufacturing them. McCormick was enabled also to arrange with a firm in Brockport, N.Y., to make his reapers on a royalty, and this business provided the great wheat district of Central New York with machines. In 1847 and 1848 he obtained still other patents for new features of the reaper.

The First Reaper.

In 1846 he had already fixed upon Chicago as the best centre of operations for the reaper business, and at the close of the year he moved there. The next year the sale of the reapers rose to seven hundred, and more than doubled in 1849. Having associated his two brothers, William S. and Leander J., with him, Cyrus McCormick found time to devote himself to introducing the reaper in the Old World. The American exhibit at the London World's Fair of 1851 was rather a small one, redeemed largely by the McCormick reaper, which the London Times, as I have already said, praised as worth to the farmers of Great Britain more than the whole cost of the exhibition. To it was awarded the grand prize, known as the council medal.

The reaper's advance in public favor was as steady on the other side of the water as here, and medals and honors were awarded McCormick at many important exhibitions. During the Paris Exposition of 1867 McCormick superintended the work of his reapers at a field trial held by the exposition authorities, and so conclusively defeated all competitors that Napoleon III., who walked after the reapers, expressed his determination to confer upon the inventor, then and there, the Cross of the Legion of Honor. At the French Exposition of 1878 the McCormick wire-binder won the grand prize. From 1850 the success of the reaper was assured. Mr. McCormick might have rested content with what had been achieved, but it was not his nature. He not only continued to bear upon his shoulders the larger share of responsibility of the rapidly growing business, but he labored persistently to add to the effectiveness of his invention.

The great fire that swept Chicago in 1871 left nothing of the already important works established by Mr. McCormick. But, as might be expected from such a man, he was a tower of strength to the city in her time of distress, and one of those to rally first from the blow and to inspire hope. Within a year, assisted by his brother Leander, he had raised from the ashes an immense establishment, which with the growth of the last few years now covers forty acres of ground. More than 2,000 men are here employed. The statistics for last year show that more than 20,000 tons of special bar-iron and steel, 2,800 tons of sheet steel, and 26,000 tons of castings were used in making the 142,000 machines sold. Ten million feet of lumber were used, chiefly in boxing and crating, as very little wood is now used in the reaper.

This is a marvellous development from the little Virginia shop of 1840, with its output of one machine a week, and the growth means far more for the country at large than might be inferred from these figures; the farmers of the world owe more to the McCormick reaper than they can repay. The whir of the American reaper is heard around the world. In Egypt, Russia, India, Australia the machine is helping man with more than a giant's strength. Recent American travellers through Persia have described the singular effect produced upon them by seeing the McCormick reaper doing its steady work in the fields over which Haroun Al Raschid may have roamed. And this wonderful machine is followed with awe by the more ignorant of the natives, who look upon its achievements as little short of magical. They are not far wrong, however, for it is more amazing than any wonder described in their "Arabian Nights."

The last years of Cyrus H. McCormick's life were such as have fallen to few of the world's benefactors, for as a rule the pioneer who shows the road has a hard time of it, even unto the end. Mr. McCormick had the satisfaction of knowing not only that by his invention he had conferred a blessing upon the workmen of the world, but that the world had acknowledged the debt. Material prosperity, however, was not considered any reason for luxurious idleness. To the close of his life Mr. McCormick continued to supervise the business of his firm and to make the reaper more perfect. No great exhibition abroad or in this country passed without some of its honors falling to the share of the McCormick reaper.

The private life of Cyrus H. McCormick was a happy one, and to this may be attributed no small share of the elasticity and courage that recognized no defeat as final. Congress failed to do him justice; his business was attacked by hordes of rivals; it was interrupted by the fire of 1871 and afterward threatened by labor strikes incited by self-seeking demagogues. Hard work was the rule of his life and not the exception. But that his nature remained sweet and just is shown by his untiring work upon behalf of others. His home life, as I have just remarked, was unusually blessed. In 1858 he married Miss Nettie Fowler, a daughter of Melzar Fowler, of Jefferson County, New York. Of the seven children born of this marriage, five lived to grow up, his son, Cyrus H. McCormick, now occupying his father's place at the head of the great works in Chicago. One of the daughters, Anita, is the widow of Emmons Blaine. The inventor of the reaping-machine died on the 13th of May, 1884. Robert H. Parkinson, of Cincinnati, speaks as follows of one of the last interviews he had with Mr. McCormick: "Though struggling with the infirmities of age, he took on a kind of majesty which belongs alone to that combination of great mental and moral strength, and he surprised me by the power with which he grappled the matters under discussion, and the strong personality before which obstacles went down as swiftly and inevitably as grain before the knife of his machine. I think myself fortunate in having had this glimpse of him and in being able to remember with so much personal association a life so complete in its achievements, so far-reaching in its impress, alike upon the material, moral, and religious progress of the country, and so thoroughly successful and beneficial in every department of activity and influence which it entered." One of his friends, speaking of Mr. McCormick, said: "That which gave intensity to his purpose, strength to his will, and nerved him with perseverance that never failed was his supreme regard for justice, his worshipful reverence for the true and right. The thoroughness of his conviction that justice must be done, that right must be maintained, made him insensible to reproach and impatient of delay. I do not wonder that his character was strong, nor that his purpose was invincible, nor that his plans were crowned with an ultimate and signal success, for where conviction of right is the motive-power and the attainment of justice the end in view, with faith in God there is no such word as fail."

Cyrus H. McCormick was not only the inventor of a great labor-saving device, but he helped his fellow-man in other ways. Philanthropy, religion, education, journalism, and politics received a share of his attention. More than thirty years ago he was already an active power for good in the councils of his church. In 1859 he proposed to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to endow with $100,000 the professorships of a theological seminary, to be established in Chicago. This was done, and during his lifetime he gave about half a million dollars to this institution-the Theological Seminary of the Northwest. The McCormick professorship of natural philosophy in the Washington and Lee University of Virginia, and gifts to the Union Theological Seminary at Hampden-Sidney, and to the college at Hastings, Neb., also attest his solicitude for the church in which he had been reared and of which he had been a member since 1834. In 1872 he came to the aid of the struggling organ of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest, the Interior, and used it to foster union between the Old and the New Schools in the church, to aid in harmonizing the Presbyterian Church in the North and South, to advance the interests of the Theological Seminary, and to promote the welfare of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest. Under his care and advice the Interior grew to be a mighty voice, expressing the convictions, the aspirations, and hopes of a great church.

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