He originated a new method of advertising the self-binders among the farmers. Special flat-cars were provided for him by the railroads. Upon each one of these cars a binder was placed, in the charge of an expert. These cars, during the harvest season, were attached to ordinary freight trains; and whenever the train came to a busy wheat-field it was stopped for an hour or more, the self-binder was rushed from the car to the field, and an exhibition of its skill given to the wondering farmers. Then it was put back on its car, and the train resumed its leisurely course until it arrived at the next scene of harvesting.
The sensitive-natured inventor, Charles B. Withington, who gave such timely aid to McCormick, was one of the most romantic knights-errant of industry in his generation. Born near Akron a year before McCormick invented his Reaper, he was trained by his father to be a watchmaker. At fifteen, to earn some pocket-money, he went into the harvest field to bind grain. He was not robust, and the hard, stooping labor 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 would throw himself upon the stubble to rest.
At eighteen he set out to find his fortune in the far West, became a Forty-niner, drifted to Australia, and in 1855 came back to Janesville, Wisconsin, with three thousand dollars or more in his belt. All this money he proceeded to fritter away on the invention of a self-rake Reaper—"a crazy scheme," as the townspeople called it. As it happened, the whole southern region of Wisconsin was being stirred up at that time by the speeches of an inventive Madison editor, who went by the name of "Pump" Carpenter. Carpenter's hobby was that the binding of grain must be done by machinery. He was eloquent and popular, and his arguments were substantiated by a little model which he was accustomed to carry about with him. Withington heard him speak and was converted. He dropped his self-rake reaper and went to work upon a self-binder. He completed his first machine in 1872, and was thrust from one discouragement to another until two years later he met McCormick.
It is a most interesting fact, and certainly not an accidental one, that the group of noted inventors who together produced the self-binder all appeared from the region south of Madison, which had been so aroused by the eloquence of "Pump" Carpenter. Besides C. B. Withington, there were Sylvanus D. Locke, also of Janesville, H. A. Holmes, of Beloit, John F. Appleby, of Mazomanie, W. W. Burson, Jacob Behel, George H. Spaulding, and Marquis L. Gorham, of Rockford.
Until 1880, all went well with McCormick and the Withington self-binder. Apparently, the process of invention had ceased. The Reaper had become of age. This miraculous wire-twisting machine was working everywhere with clock-like precision, and was believed to be the best that human ingenuity could devise. Then, like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, came the news that William Deering had made and sold 3,000 twine self-binders, and that the farmers had all at once become prejudiced against the use of wire. Wire, they said, got mixed with the straw and killed their cattle. Wire fell in the wheat and made trouble in the flour-mills. Wire cut their hands. Wire cluttered up their barn-yards. They would have no more to do with wire. What they wanted and must have was twine.
William Deering, the newcomer who had caused this disturbance, became in a flash McCormick's ablest competitor. He had entered the business eight years before with a running start, having been a successful dry goods merchant in Maine. His geneology in the harvester industry shows that he had become an active partner of E. H. Gammon in 1872. Gammon, who had formerly been a Methodist preacher in Maine, had started as an agent for Seymour and Morgan of Brockport, which firm had been licensed by McCormick in 1845. Deering was the first highly skilled business man to enter the harvester trade. He was not a farmer's son, like McCormick. He was city-bred and factory trained. And in 1880 he staked practically his whole fortune upon the making of 3,000 twine self-binders, and won.
Cyrus McCormick saw at a glance that the wire self-binder must go. It was his policy to give the farmers what they wanted, rather than to force upon them an unpopular machine. So he called to his aid a mechanical genius named Marquis L. Gorham—one of those who had been lured into the quest of a self-binder by the insistence of "Pump" Carpenter. Gorham's most valuable contribution was a self-sizing device, by which all bound sheaves were made to be the same size. By the time that the grain stood ripe and yellow the following season, Gorham had prepared a twine self-binder that worked well, and McCormick, yielding to this sudden hostility against wire, pushed the Gorham machine with the full force of his great organization.
This evolution of the Reaper into the twine self-binder was a momentous event. It tremendously increased the sales. There were 60,000 machines of all kinds sold in 1880, and 250,000 in 1885. And it strikingly decreased the number of manufacturers. There were a hundred or more until the appearance of the twine binder: and all but twenty-two fell out of the race. Some of these were driven out by the expensive war of patents that now ensued. But most of them gave up the contest for lack of capital. The era of big production had arrived, and the little hand-labor shops could not produce an intricate self-binder for the low price at which they were being sold.
Even McCormick lost heavily at first, before a truce was called in this battle of the binders. One lawsuit cost him more than $225,000 and one experiment, with what was called a "low-down" binder, cost him $80,000. He was as determined as ever not to be beaten; and although he was at this time over seventy years of age, and sorely crippled by rheumatism, he straightway entered into a trade war with Deering, which was not ended until 1902. Many of the older workmen who are now employed in the McCormick works can remember the stress and strain of those battling years, and how their indomitable old leader, at times when he was unable to walk, would have himself pushed in a wheeled chair through the various buildings of his immense plant, to make sure that every part of the great mechanism was working smoothly.
Of all the competitors who had fought him in the early days, before the Civil War, there were few now remaining. Hussey, his first antagonist, had sold out to a mowing machine syndicate in 1861. Emerson, Seymour, and Morgan had decided not to make self-binders. Jerome Fassler, of Springfield, Ohio, took his fortune of two million dollars and went to New York City in 1882 with a scheme to build a subway. Manny was dead, and very few were living of those who had seen the Reaper of 1831.
John P. Adriance, of Poughkeepsie, had survived. He was a gentle-natured man, who was content with a small and safe percentage of the business. Byron E. Huntley, of Batavia, had also built up a small, but solidly based, enterprise. He had been the office-boy, in 1845, in the factory where the first hundred McCormick Reapers were made; and he had been a manufacturer on his own account since 1850. He, too, was a quiet, dignified man, very highly esteemed in both the United States and Europe. Lewis Miller, who deserves most credit as the creator of the mower, continued to do business at Akron. Mr. Miller was almost equally famous as a Methodist and the originator of the Chautauqua idea. At Auburn, N. Y., David M. Osborne was fighting manfully to keep in the race. He had built seven Reapers as early as 1856; and had made many friends by his ability and uprightness. At Hoosick Falls, N. Y., there was Walter A. Wood—a most competent and enterprising man; at Plano, Illinois, there was William H. Jones—self-made and as honest as the soil; and at Springfield, Ohio, were the picturesque William N. Whiteley and the powerful company of Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner. Whiteley was an inventor who had changed a McCormick Reaper into what he called a "combined machine"—a combined Reaper and mower. And Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner had begun to make McCormick Reapers, by means of a license from Seymour and Morgan, in 1852.
Such were the most notable men who, together with McCormick and Deering, began in 1880 or soon afterwards to manufacture the new knot-tying device that had become necessary to the Reaper. As for Cyrus H. McCormick himself, he lived to see it the universal grain-cutter of all civilized countries. He lived to see it perfected into one of the most astonishing mechanisms known to man—an almost rational machine that cuts the grain, carries it on a canvas escalator up to steel hands that shape it into bundles, tie a cord around it as neatly as could be done by a sailor, and cut the cord; after which the bound sheaf is pushed into a basket and held until five of them have been collected, whereupon they are dropped carefully upon the ground.
Since 1884 there has been no essential change in the fashion of the self-binder. It is the same to-day as when McCormick was alive. In the span of his single life the Reaper was born and grew to its full maturity. He saw its Alpha and its Omega. Best of all, he saw not only its humble arrival, in a remote Virginia settlement, but, as we shall see, he saw it become the plaything of Emperors, the marvel of Siberian plainsmen, the liberator of the land-serf in twenty countries, and the bread-machine of one-half of the human race.
BY 1850 Cyrus H. McCormick was ready for new business. He now had a factory of his own, and the assistance of his brothers, William and Leander. He had a score of busy agents and a few thousand dollars in the bank. He had fought down the ridicule of the farm-hands. It was only six years since he had set out from his Virginian farm with $300 in his belt and the Idea of the Reaper in his brain; but in those six years he had worked mightily and succeeded. His Reapers were now clicking merrily in more than three thousand American wheat-fields. So, it was a natural thing that in the first flush of victory, he should look across the sea for "more worlds to conquer."
There was at that time no general demand for Reapers in any European country. Labor was plentiful and cheap—forty cents a day in Great Britain and about half as much in Germany and France. In Austria and Russia the farm laborers received no wages at all. They were serfs. There was no economic reason why serfs should be replaced by machinery. They had first to become free and expensive to employ, before this Reaper, this product of a free republic, could set them free from the drudgery of the harvest.
England had been the first European country to abolish this serfdom. Several centuries before, the ravages of the Black Death had made farm laborers so scarce that their rights had begun to be respected. Also, the upgrowth of the factory system and the development of English shipping had called thousands of men away from the fields, and raised the wages of those who were left behind. And the falling off in profits was compelling many English land-owners to study better methods of farming, and to favor the introduction of farm machinery.
Fortunately for McCormick, he had no sooner begun to think of foreign trade than there came the famous London Exposition of 1851. This mammoth Exhibition was to Great Britain what the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was to the United States—magnificent evidence of industrial progress. Its main promoter had been Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, and its success gave the keenest pleasure to the young Queen. In a letter written to the King of the Belgians, she thus describes her impressions upon the opening day:
"My dearest Uncle," she writes, "I wish you could have witnessed the 1st May, 1851, the greatest day in our history, the most beautiful and imposing and touching spectacle ever seen, and the triumph of my beloved Albert. Truly it was astonishing, a fairy scene. Many cried, and all felt touched and impressed with devotional feelings. It was the happiest, proudest day in my life, and I can think of nothing else. You will be astounded at this great work when you see it. The beauty of the building and the vastness of it all!"
The crowning jewel of this Exposition was the priceless Koh-i-noor diamond, which the Queen had received from India the previous year, and had loaned to the Exposition managers. For five thousand years, so the legend ran, this diamond had been one of the most precious treasures of Asia. It had been worn by the hero Karna. And it had been so often the most coveted prize in war that there was a Hindoo saying—"Whoever possesses the Koh-i-noor has conquered his enemies."
Most of the courts of Europe had sent some dazzling treasure. There were tapestries from the Viceroy of Egypt, and rugs from the Sultan of Turkey, and silks from the King of Spain. There were marbles from Paris, and paintings from Dresden, and embroideries from Vienna. And in the midst of this resplendent Exposition, surrounded and outshone by the exhibits of Russia, Austria, and France, lay a shabby collection of odds and ends from the United States.
For three weeks the American department was the joke of the Exposition. It was nicknamed the "Prairie Ground." It had no jewels, nor silks, nor golden candelabra. There were only such preposterous things as Dick's Press, Borden's Meat Biscuit, St. John's Soap, and McCormick's Reaper. This last contraption was the most preposterous of all. It was said to be "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying-machine." It was unlike anything else that English eyes had ever seen, and by all odds the queerest and most ungainly thing that lay under the glass roof of the Crystal Palace. Undeniably it was the "Ugly Duckling" of the American exhibit.
But one day there came to the Reaper booth a remarkable Anglo-Italian named John J. Mechi. His father had been the barber of George III., and he himself, by the invention of a "Magic Razor Strop," had made a fortune. His hobby was scientific farming, and he was hungry for new methods and new ideas. At the time of the Exposition, his farm, which lay not far from London, had become the most famous experimental ground in England. Therefore, when he spied this new contrivance called a Reaper, he proposed that it be taken out to his farm and put to the test.
This was done on July twenty-fourth. In spite of a pouring rain, there were present a group of judges and two hundred farmers. Lord Ebrington was there, and Prince Frederick of Holstein, and several other titled agriculturists. One other machine was to be tested, besides McCormick's. It was put into the grain first and was at once seen to be a failure. It broke down the grain instead of cutting it. Seeing this mishap, several of the farmers said to Mr. Mechi, "You had better stop this trial, because it is destroying your grain." Whereupon Mr. Mechi made one of the noblest replies that can be found in the annals of progress. "Gentlemen," he said, "this is a great experiment for the benefit of my country. When a new principle is about to be established, individual interests must always give way. If it is necessary for the success of this test, you may take my seventy acres of wheat."
Then came the McCormick Reaper, driven by an expert named Mackenzie. It swept down the field like a chariot of war, with whirling reel and clattering blade—seventy-four yards in seventy seconds. It was a miracle. Such a thing had never before been seen by Europeans. "This is a triumph for the American Reaper," said the delighted Mechi. "It has done its work completely; and the day will come when this machine will cut all the grain in England. Now," he continued, swinging his hat, "let us, as Englishmen, show our appreciation by giving three hearty English cheers."
Horace Greeley, who was present on this occasion, described the victory of the McCormick Reaper as follows:—"It came into the field to confront a tribunal already prepared for its condemnation. Before it stood John Bull—burly, dogged, and determined not to be humbugged,—his judgment made up and his sentence ready to be recorded. There was a moment, and but a moment, of suspense; then human prejudice could hold out no longer; and burst after burst of involuntary cheers from the whole crowd proclaimed the triumph of the Yankee Reaper. In seventy seconds McCormick had become famous. He was the lion of the hour; and had he brought five hundred Reapers with him, he could have sold them all."
Suddenly the "Ugly Duckling" had become a swan. The glory of the Reaper began to rival that of the Koh-i-noor. McCormick was given not only a First Prize but a Council Medal, such as was usually awarded only to Kings and Governments. The London Times, which had led the jeering, became now the loudest in the chorus of approval. "The Reaping machine from the United States," said the Times editor, "is the most valuable contribution from abroad, to the stock of our previous knowledge, that we have yet discovered. It is worth the whole cost of the Exposition." Also, speaking on behalf of the English people, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer said, "For all manly and practical purposes, the place of the United States is at the head of the poll. Where, out of America, shall we get a pistol like Mr. Colt's, to kill our eight enemies in a second, or a reaping machine like Mr. McCormick's, to clear out twenty acres of wheat in a day?"
On the whole, this Exposition gave the United States its first opportunity to answer the unpleasant questions that Sidney Smith had asked in 1820. What have the Americans done, he had asked, for the arts and sciences? Where are their Arkwrights, their Watts, their Davys? Here he was answered by the McCormick Reaper, the Colt revolver, the Hobbs lock, the Morse telegraph, the Howe sewing-machine, the Deere plow, and the Hoe press. And, as if to make the triumph of American invention complete, it was in this year that the yacht America easily out-classed the famous yachts of England in a great race at Cowes, and that the American steamer Baltic, of the Collins Line, broke all the ocean records and became the speediest vessel on the high seas.
This Exposition did much for McCormick. It was the first appreciation of his work, in a large way, that he had received. It was a welcome change after twenty strenuous years. It gave him the distinction that a naturally strong nature craved, and secured the friendship of such eminent men as Junius Morgan, George Peabody, J. J. Mechi, and Lord Granville. From a business point of view, also, the Exposition was of great service to McCormick. It enabled him to draw up a new plan of campaign for the foreign trade.
In the United States, he had made his appeal directly to the mass of the farmers. In Europe he could not do this. The vast bulk of the farmers here were tenants or serfs. But it was also true, he observed, that the Kings of Europe, and the members of the nobility, were land-owners. Here was his chance. He would begin at the top. He would sell his Reapers to the kings.
He noticed that kings and queens were not the remote and inaccessible personages that he had believed them to be. Prince Albert was plainly more interested in farm machinery than in the Koh-i-noor. The one prize which was awarded to him personally was for a model cottage, in which a workingman's family might live with greater comfort. And one morning, while McCormick was giving attention to his Reaper, the Queen and her ten-year-old son (now the King of England) walked past and had a view of the American Reaping machine that had been so widely ridiculed and praised.
McCormick had to hurry back to the United States, on account of a patent suit that was then in full swing; but before he left England he established an agency in London, and started a vigorous campaign among the titled land-owners. He prepared a statement, showing that even at the low rate of wages that were paid on English farms a Reaper would mean a handsome saving to English wheat-growers. But he did not depend upon the argument of economy. He placed his reliance also upon the fact that the Reaper had become the playtoy of kings, and that their fancy would presently make it the fashion.
Four years later he went with another Reaper to an Exposition at Paris, won the Gold Medal, and sold his machine to the Emperor. Then, in 1862, with his wife and young son and daughter, he made his headquarters in London, and opened up a two-years' campaign in Great Britain, Germany, and France. Up to this time the foreign trade had grown but slowly. All European countries combined were not buying more than half a million dollars' worth of farm machinery a year from Americans—less than we sell them now in five days. So McCormick exerted himself to the utmost.
He held field tests to awaken the farmers. He advertised and organized. There were now several dozen other manufacturers in the field, all making Reapers more or less like McCormick's; and he gave battle to them at London, Lille, and Hamburg. After the Hamburg contest, Joseph A. Wright, the United States Commissioner, cabled to New York: "McCormick has thrashed all nations and walked off with the Gold Medal."
Again, in 1867, McCormick had a notable time at Paris. The Emperor Napoleon III., then in the last days of his inherited glory, permitted McCormick to give a sort of Reaper matinée on the royal estate at Châlons. The Emperor was present, at first on horseback, and then on foot. The sun was hot, and presently he said to McCormick, "If you will allow me, I'll come under your umbrella." So the two men, dramatically different in the tendencies they represented, walked arm in arm behind the Reaper, and watched it automatically cut and rake off the grain. The Emperor was delighted. He forgot for the moment his impending troubles, and at once offered McCormick the Cross of the Legion of Honor. This was, in all probability, the last time that the coveted Cross was conferred in France by the hand of a sovereign; and the meeting of the two men was a highly impressive event, the one man typifying a falling dynasty that had risen to greatness by the sword, and the other the founder of a new industry that was destined to bring peace and plenty to all nations alike.
Two years later, because of the clamor of McCormick's competitors, a grand Field Test was arranged by the German Government at Altenberg. Thirty-eight contestants entered the lists, and after a most exciting tournament the judges awarded the Gold Medal and a special prize of sixty ducats to McCormick. Such contests, from this time onward, came thick and fast. Several days later McCormick swept the field at Altona. In 1873 he was decorated by the Austrian Emperor. And in 1878 the French Academy of Science elected him a member, for the reason that he "had done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man."
From Painting by Cabanel
From that time to the present day the making of Reapers and Harvesters has remained an American business. An American machine must pay twenty dollars to enter France, and twenty-five to enter Hungary. But try as they may, other nations cannot learn the secret of the Reaper. They cannot produce a machine that is at once so complex, so hardy, and so efficient. When Bismarck, at the close of his life, was inspecting several American self-binders which he had bought for his farm at Fredericksruhe, he asked, "Why do they not make these machines in Germany?" As we have seen, had he wished a complete answer he would have had to read the history of the United States. He would have seen that the Reaper can be produced only in countries where labor receives a high reward, where farmers own their own acres without fear of being despoiled by invading armies, and where the average of intelligence and enterprise is as high in the country as in the city.
In 1898 Europe had become so dependent upon America for its reaping machinery that 22,000 machines were shipped from the McCormick plant alone—so many that a fleet of twelve vessels had to be chartered to carry them. There are now as many American Reapers and Harvesters in Europe as can do the work of 12,000,000 men. Of all American machines exported, the Reaper is at the head of the list. It has been the chief pathfinder for our foreign trade. Four-fifths of all the harvesting machinery in the world is made in the United States; and one-third, perhaps more, in the immense factory-city that Cyrus H. McCormick founded in Chicago in 1847.
It was McCormick's most solid satisfaction, in his later life, to see foreign nations, one by one, adopt his invention and move up out of the Famine Zone. No news was at any time more welcome to him than the tidings that a new territory had been entered. And although the foreign trade has been vastly multiplied in the past five or six years, he lived long enough to see his catalogue printed in twenty languages, and to know that as long as the human race continued to eat bread, the sun would never set upon the empire of the Reaper.
"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.
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—
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?"
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.
CYRUS H. MCCORMICK was a great commercial Thor. He was six feet tall, weighed two hundred pounds, and had the massive shoulders of a wrestler. His body was well proportioned, with small hands and feet. His hair, even in old age, was very dark and waving. His bearing was erect, his manner often imperious, and his general appearance that of a man built on large lines and for large affairs.
Men of lesser caliber regarded him with fear, not for any definite reason, but because, as Seneca has said—"In him that has power, all men consider not what he has done, but what he may do." He was so strong, so dominating, so ready to crash through obstacles by sheer bulk of will-power, that smaller men could never quite subdue a feeling of alarm while they were in his presence. He was impatient of small talk and small criticisms and small objections. He had no tact at retail, and he saw no differences in little-minded people. All his life he had been plagued and obstructed by the Liliputians of the world, and he had no patience to listen to their chattering. He was often as rude as Carlyle to those who tied their little threads of pessimism across his path.
At fashionable gatherings he would now and then be seen—a dignified figure; but his mind was almost too ponderous an engine to do good service in a light conversation. If a subject did not interest him, he had nothing to say. What gave him, perhaps, the highest degree of social pleasure, was the entertaining, at his house, of such men as Horace Greeley, William H. Seward, Peter Cooper, Abram S. Hewitt, George Peabody, Junius Morgan, Cyrus W. Field, or some old friend from Virginia.
His long years of pioneering had made him a self-sufficient man, and a man who lived from within. He did not pick up his opinions on the streets. His mind was not open to any chance idea. He had certain clear, definite convictions, logical and consistent. What he knew, he knew. There were no hazy imaginings in his mind. The main secret of his power lay in his ability to focus all his energies upon a few subjects. Once, in 1848, he mentioned the French Revolution in one of his letters. "It is a mighty affair," he wrote, "and will be likely to stand." But usually he paid little attention to the world-dramas that were being enacted. He was too busy—too devoted to affairs which, if he did not attend to them, would not be attended to at all.
McCormick was a product of the Protestant Reformation, and of the capitalistic development that came with it. The whole structure of his character was based upon the two great dogmas of the Reformation—the sovereignty of God and the direct responsibility of the individual. Whoever would know the springs at which his life was fed must read the story of Luther, Calvin, and Knox. They must call to mind the attitude of Luther at the Diet of Worms, when he faced the men who had the power to take his life and said, "Here I stand. I can do no other." They must recollect how these three men, who were leaders of nations, not sects, stood out alone against the kings and ecclesiasticisms of Europe, without wealth, without armies, without anything except a higher Moral Idea, and succeeded so mightily they actually changed the course of empires and became the pathfinders of the human race.
McCormick was so essentially a result of this religio-economic movement that it is impossible to separate his religion and his business life. He was an individualist through and through—as well marked a type of the Covenanter in commerce as the United States has ever produced. He believed in presbyters in religion, private capitalists in business, and elected representatives in government. He was opposed to feudalism and bureaucracy in all their myriad forms. He held the middle ground, the via media, between the over-organization of the fourteenth century, when the rights of the individual were forgotten, and the lax liberalism of to-day, when too much is left to individual whim and caprice, and when duties and responsibilities are too apt to be ignored.
Above all constituted authorities stood a man's own conscience. This was McCormick's faith, and it was this that made him the fighter that he was. It gave him courage and the fortitude that is rarer than courage. It compelled him to oppose his own political party at the Baltimore Convention of 1861. It made him stand single-handed against his fellow-manufacturers, in defence of his rights as an inventor. It enabled him to beat down the Pennsylvania Railroad, after a twenty-three year contest, and to prove that a great corporation cannot lawfully do an injustice to an individual.
McCormick was nourished on this virile Calvinistic faith from the time when he first learned to read out of the Shorter Catechism and the Bible. It had been the faith of his fathers for generations, and it was bred into him from boyhood. Nevertheless, according to the practice of the Presbyterians, there had to come a time when he himself openly made his choice. This occasion came in 1834, when McCormick was twenty-five years of age. A four-day meeting was being held in the little stone church on his grandfather's farm. Three ministers were in charge. As was the custom, there was constant preaching from morning until sundown, with an hour's respite for dinner. At the close of the fourth day, all who wished to become avowed Christians were requested to stand up. Cyrus McCormick was there, and he was not a member of the church; yet he did not stand up. That night his father went to his bedside and gently reproached him. "My son," he said, "don't you know that your silence is a public rejection of your Saviour?" Cyrus was conscience-stricken. He leapt from his bed and began to dress himself. "I'll go and see old Billy McClung," he said. Half an hour later, old Billy McClung, who was a universally respected religious leader in the community, was amazed to be called out of his sleep by a greatly troubled young man, who wanted to know by what means he might make his peace with his Maker. The next Sunday this young man stood up in the church, and became in name what he already was by nature and inheritance—a Christian of the Presbyterian faith.
After he left home his letters to the members of his family are strewn with scraps of religious reflection. In 1845, for instance, he writes, "Business is not inconsistent with Christianity; but the latter ought to be a help to the former, giving a confidence and resignation, after using all proper means; and yet I have sometimes felt that I came so far short of the right feeling, so worldly-minded, that I could wish myself out of the world." On another occasion, when he was struggling with manufacturers who had broken their contracts, he wrote, "If it were not for the fact that Providence has seemed to assist me in our business, it has at times seemed that I would almost sink under the weight of responsibility hanging upon me; but I believe the Lord will help us out." And after his first visit to New York City, he summed up his impressions of the metropolis in the following sentence, "It is a desirable place and people, with regular and good Presbyterian preaching."
McCormick enjoyed with all his heart the logical, doctrinal sermon. His favorite Bible passage was the eighth chapter of Romans, that indomitable victorious chapter that ends like the blast of a trumpet:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'for Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us; for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
His favorite hymn, which he sang often and with the deepest fervor, was that melodious prayer that begins—