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The romance of the reaper and the life of its prophet are forgotten, perhaps, in the cities. But in the fields of the world, men hitch everything from gas tractors to camels and musk oxen ahead of their harvesting machinery and marvel, as regularly as the world's cereals ripen, at the power over the earth given them by one man's brain.
Cyrus Hall McCormick used to go with his father, Robert, into a log hut on their Virginia farm and the two would work secretly for hours. The father was a Scotch-Irishman, quick with his hands. He had invented a hemp-brake, a cloyer-sheller, a bellows and a threshing machine that won him fame before he left the old country. He often stood pensively over a rusted wreck beside his Virginia barn, the wreck of a baffled dream. Cyrus too studied it. It was a reaper that would not reap. One day in 1831 (after his father's death), he hitched four horses to an ungainly contraption, "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying machine" (London Times), and lurched into a neighbor's hilly oatfield. Horses shied, dogs barked, boys yelled, slaves giggled as the burly 22-year-old inventor and his clumsy juggernaut slewed and jolted through a ragged swath. Farmer Ruff, owner of the oats, called a halt; he thought his grain was being thrashed standing. But a local politician rode up and invited McCormick upon his land. There the contraption reaped six acres in half a day—six men's work. Young McCormick devoted himself to his invention with monastic zeal. He avoided marriage—"Alas, I have other work"—and farmed alone. Over the countryside he preached the reaper, but (like Mohammed) converted only his own family at first. Not until 1841 did he sell a reaper, but the next year he sold seven, at $100 apiece. The family farm became a rural factory, turning out 29 machines in 1843, 50 in 1844. Then Cyrus McCormick bestrode his horse and rode into the Midwest. He saw the vast prairies, saw hogs turned loose in wheat that men had not time to harvest. He rode through Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio and New York proclaiming the reaper, calling men to buy.
In 1847, McCormick entered a swampy town at the foot of Lake Michigan. It had no railroad, no canal; only a river, flowing the wrong way. But it was busy and McCormick saw that it was good. After two minutes' talk, Chicago's first mayor, William B. Ogden, bought a half partnership and McCormick proceeded to build his factory. They sold $50,000 worth of reapers for the next harvest.
When he could, McCormick bought out Ogden. He wanted, all by himself, to make all the harvesters in the world. When, in 1871, Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern and his factory was a mass of embers, McCormick turned to his beautiful young wife and asked if he should rebuild or retire. Nettie Fowler McCormick replied: "Build again at once. I do not want, our boy to grow up in idleness." He rebuilt, bigger than ever. Their boy was Cyrus Hall Jr., then a lad of 12. The next year he had a brother, Harold Fowler. There were other children, but these two were the only ones to engage actively in their father's vast business. And today the tradition is continued by Cyrus 3rd.