PART II
The day before his uncle's next visit Jimmie set his type to say, "Much interest is felt in the new Hoe press which will be installed in the Record office early next month. It is the first of the kind to be used by any newspaper in the city and will mark a revolution in newspaper printing. This new 'perfecting press' will make it possible to print 24,000 eight-page papers an hour—a thing not dreamed of a few years ago. People are anxious to see this fast press printing, cutting, folding, and delivering the papers all ready for the newsboys."
"You really know of somebody who is anxious to see the press, do you?" asked his uncle with a twinkle in his eye when he read the item in Jimmie's paper.
"Guess I do," said Jimmie. "Honestly, I won't be any bother; I won't be any bother; I won't ask any questions except about the press—cross my heart and hope to die."
Uncle Francis laughed. He knew Jimmie too well to think he would not be any bother, but he said, "All right; as soon as you have two good legs again I'll invite you to see the new machinery."
Jimmie's leg mended as fast as the leg of any boy should, and he was able in March to take the trip to the city. Jimmie's mother went with him.
"I want to see the big press, too," she explained to her brother.
"I'm glad you came," said Uncle Francis as he greeted her. "I should think every man and woman in the United States would be interested in this new kind of printing press. Do you know, it will bring down the price of a paper from a nickel to three cents! They have just begun to print the afternoon edition. Shall we go now to see the new Hoe rotary perfecting press? It is the most wonderful thing in printing that has ever been invented since Gutenberg invented movable type more than four hundred years ago. It seems as though it must mark the limit in fast printing, but who knows? Surely Gutenberg and Faust would have thought our old press with the pages of type on a stationary flat bed over which rollers and paper passed, the limit of wonders. Come and see this new press eat up the paper!"
The Earliest Printers at Work
They soon stood before a great throbbing monster, a mystery of wheels within wheels and of gleaming steel. At one end was a huge roll of white paper; at the other was an unceasing stream of newspapers. Jimmie watched in wide-eyed wonder. He heard his uncle say that the huge roll, or web, of white paper was being fed into one end of the press, was being printed on both sides, the newspaper sheets were being cut apart, folded, and finally delivered, counted, at the other end of the press. How could it be done!
"Well, what do you think of it all?" asked Uncle Francis, turning to Jimmie.
Jimmie hardly took his fascinated gaze from the great whirring monster.
"It's great! It's a hundred times more wonderful than I thought it would be! Now that I've seen what this press can do I think I shall run one of these instead of being an editor."
His uncle laughed. "All right," he said; "you see how this runs, do you?"
"Not all of it," admitted Jimmie.
"Probably the type part bothers you," said his uncle, "because you are accustomed to seeing the type in a flat steel frame, or chase, as we call it. Here it is on the outside of one of those huge rollers, or cylinders, as we call them. Do you see it?"
"Yes," said Jimmie, "but there isn't any type on the cylinder just under it."
"No," answered his uncle, "the other is the impression cylinder. Those two big cylinders work together like the rollers of a clothes wringer. That broad ribbon of paper, just as wide as our newspaper, goes between the two cylinders as clothes pass between the rollers of the wringer. The impression cylinder rolls the paper hard against the inked type cylinder and prints one side of the paper. If one of the rollers of a clothes wringer had ink marks on it they would be printed on the clothes as they went between the rollers, wouldn't they? That is the way this press works. Can you see the paper as it goes on?"
"Yes, and there are two more cylinders like the other pair!" cried Jimmie.
"That's right," answered his uncle. "I think you can see that when the paper passes between the second pair the other side of the paper is printed. Just get your eye on the paper as it is unwound from that enormous spool, or web, and watch as far as you can. The white paper in that web is a strip four miles long and as wide as two pages of the Record. The type cylinders turn so fast you can't see what is on them, but there is enough type to print four pages of the newspaper on each cylinder."
"Why do they need such a quantity of small black rollers?" asked Jimmie's mother.
"Those small rollers you are watching are inking cylinders," answered her brother. "They are very important in the printing. See them keep inking the type cylinder, rolling against the part which has just done some printing as it turns around to print again. I don't believe you can see the ink fountain which covers them with ink so that they in turn can cover the type, but it is there, working all the time."
"It is easy enough to see why it is called a rotary press," said Mrs. Granger. "Cylinders and cylinders and cylinders rolling round and round and round."
"Do you see why it is called a perfecting press, Jimmie?" asked Uncle Francis.
"No, I don't believe I do. Do you, mother?" he asked.
"Why, yes, I think so. Look at the other end of the press and see those newspapers fairly pouring out all cut from the web, folded, and even counted. If they are completed in every respect so that there is nothing for anybody to do but sell them, I should think the press might be called a perfecting press."
"Of course," assented Jimmie, "that's the reason. Why didn't I see it?"
Curved Stereotype Plate
"Shall we go back to the office now where there is less noise and see what to-day's paper says?" asked Uncle Francis after giving Jimmie a good long time to watch the press. "There is one thing more I should like to have you see, but it is too late for you to do so to-day. Give one look at the type cylinder before you leave. Can you see that the type is not in little pieces of one letter each, but is in solid pieces of metal curved to fit the cylinder?" On the way back to the office Uncle Francis showed Jimmie a stereotype plate which he could study at close range.
"These plates are what you saw on the type cylinder," explained Uncle Francis. "You shall see one made sometime. In these days in the big offices after the real type is set letter by letter it isn't used for the printing at all. It wears it out too fast to print 50,000 newspapers from it each day, and besides it takes too much type. Instead of using the movable type for the printing, we cover the type with a soft substance like soaked up pasteboard, press it hard on the type, dry it, and have a perfect copy of the type except that the letters are little hollows instead of raised pieces.
"This copy, or model, is used for a mold into which we pour liquid metal. When this cools we have, you see, another copy of the type and in this the letters are all raised. The mold is curved to fit the cylinders before the molten metal is poured in, so that the stereotype plate, as the page of fixed type is called, can be clamped tight on the big cylinder. It is these big plates that you have seen used for type on the press cylinders."
"Jingles! but it is some work to print a newspaper!" exclaimed Jimmie.
"Yes, it is, and it is a very wonderful process, too, more wonderful every year. You and your mother will be interested in this paragraph in to-day's paper," said his uncle, passing Mrs. Granger one of the freshly printed papers. "In that article about the new press are some striking comparisons you will enjoy."
"What a change in printing!" said Mrs. Granger. "Just listen, Jimmie! 'The old flat screw press of the colonial period could print fifty small papers on one side in an hour; the Washington compound lever hand press in 1829—the best hand press ever made—brought the number up to 250; the revolving cylinder press made it possible to print about 1000 an hour; then in 1847 the Hoe lightning press printed 30,000; and now the Hoe rotary perfecting press prints on both sides,—not a little four-page paper, but a large-sized eight-page paper—at the rate of 24,000 an hour!'"
"Jingles!" said Jimmie again, for what can a boy say to such figures as those.
When Jimmie reached home that night he announced to his father that he was going to be a newspaper man.
"I'm willing," replied his father. "The printing press has done more for the progress of civilization than anything else, and the modern newspaper is one of the greatest factors in the world's advancement. Go ahead. You'll live to see the printing press reach even more people than it does now."
Sextuple Perfecting Press
Mr. Granger was right. When Jimmie was no older than his uncle had been on the day that Jimmie first saw a big press, Jimmie did indeed see another wonder. It was a Hoe Double Octuple Press—the biggest press in the world in 1912—which, with others built on the same principle even if they were smaller, made newspaper printing cheap enough so that a sixteen-page paper could be sold for one cent.
The grown-up Jimmie felt as he stood by the new press very much as he felt years before. Could there be a more wonderful machine? Eight rolls of paper were feeding the monster; eighteen plate cylinders were revolving, each carrying type enough for eight pages of a large newspaper; the cylinders, turning at a speed of three hundred revolutions a minute, were consuming paper at the rate of 108 miles of paper six feet wide in an hour. Jimmie, then an experienced newspaper man, watched the four sets of folders pouring out thirty-two-page papers at the rate of 75,000 an hour, until he turned away, saying, "Can it be possible that printing will ever be easier? How I wish Benjamin Franklin could see this press! How he would glory in its possibilities! It is perfectly true that the printing press is to literature what the steam engine is to the industries, and what the locomotive is to traffic."
[ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE]
When Anna Holman was twelve years old she had to sit perfectly still for one hundred twenty seconds—think of it! two whole minutes!—to have her picture taken. Now she could have it taken in one hundredth of the time at one hundredth of the cost.
The only likenesses of people which Anna knew about before she was twelve were the pictures in the parlor of her home. Two of these were pictures of her Grandfather and Grandmother Holman, whom she had never seen. These pictures always interested her, though for a certain reason she did not like them.
Anna had been told that her grandmother was a great beauty in her day, and she often tried to see if she could tell how her grandmother had looked. This she never felt sure she knew, as the picture was only a silhouette. Of all the different kinds of pictures that people have had made, the silhouette, surely, is the most unsatisfactory.
These were not uncommon in the days before photography was known. They were made by using a strong light to obtain a clear, black shadow of the profile of the sitter, and then cutting from plain black paper as perfect a copy as possible of the shadow head. Of course, the sitter was always posed for a direct side view in order to get an outline of the features; and, of course, in such a picture the expression of the face was wholly lacking.
Silhouettes of Grandfather and Grandmother
When Grandmother Holman sat for her silhouette and the picture maker had cut out the little black shadow which her beautiful head had made, Grandfather Holman said, "It is perfect, Rebecca"; and then when Grandfather Holman, in turn, had sat for his picture and the picture maker had cut a silhouette which showed very little but his straight nose and strong chin, Grandmother Holman said: "It is just like you, James."
They knew each other well enough to supply the expression which the pictures lacked. In fact they were so well pleased with the little black paper heads that they had them mounted on white cards and framed for the parlor, never dreaming how these same silhouettes would some day disappoint a little granddaughter who wanted to know how her grandparents had really looked.
In the same room was a life-size oil portrait of Anna's great grandfather. This she liked, and she felt that she knew just how he had looked.
"Why didn't Grandmother Holman have some artist paint a picture of her?" Anna asked her mother one day.
"It cost too much," her mother answered. "She wanted a portrait of your grandfather and he wanted a portrait of her; and I think there never was money enough to have a good artist paint them both. I wish we were rich enough to have a miniature of you painted, Anna. Perhaps we shall be sometime. Your Aunt Anna in her last letter says she wishes we would send her a daguerreotype of you for her Christmas present.
"I know very little about these new pictures, but they are a wonderful kind which the sun makes. I have heard that they are not very expensive, and I think that if there were only a chance here in town to have the daguerreotype taken we might do what she suggests. These pictures, as I understand it, are entirely different from anything you and I have ever seen: they show the face, the eyes, the smile—everything, like a portrait—but there are no colors; the pictures are all in black and white."
Anna had really been wondering, ever since she heard of her aunt's wish, why anybody should care to have a picture of a girl who had freckles and straight yellow hair and blue eyes, instead of curly black hair and black eyes. When she heard her mother's last words she laughed merrily.
"Would my hair be black in the picture? And my eyes, too?" she exclaimed.
"Yes, I think so," answered her mother with a smile.
"How lovely! How I hope I can have my picture taken!"
Later that very day when Anna went down town on an errand she saw this notice:
COMING AUGUST 20
Prof. Aaron B. Coleman, Artist,
will open a daguerreotype gallery and furnish
perfect likenesses of his patrons for $2.00 a picture.
Abigail Silsbee joined Anna while she was still studying the notice.
"I'm going to have my picture taken!" exclaimed Abigail joyfully. "Mrs. Follen saw some daguerreotypes in Boston when she was there, and she says they are splendid. She told mother about them yesterday, and mother says I may have one taken. Why don't you have your picture taken?"
"Perhaps I shall," answered Anna. "I'll tell my father and mother about the notice."
At supper time when Anna brought up the matter of having her picture taken, her father did not approve.
"I do not believe there are any satisfactory pictures except oil portraits," he said. "I think it would be just a waste of money."
By that time, however, Anna had become quite enthusiastic over daguerreotypes. She had learned during the afternoon of three of her friends who were going to have their pictures taken.
"May I have mine taken if I earn the money myself?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, indeed," her father replied, and then dismissed the matter, feeling that when she had seen a daguerreotype she would have no further interest in them.
It was then two weeks before the artist, as he called himself, would come to town. Anna went to work at once picking blueberries. The berries were plentiful, and Anna's purse held enough money for the picture before the two weeks had passed. Anna, however, did not go to the picture gallery the first day it was opened. She waited to see Abigail's picture. When Abigail fairly danced into the house the second afternoon after the artist's arrival, Anna was much disappointed at first, because she thought Abigail had left the picture at home.
"See!" cried Abigail, holding up something that looked like a little black wooden book. It was about four inches by three and a half and not more than half an inch thick.
Abigail's Daguerreotype
Abigail unfastened the two tiny brass hooks which held the two covers together, and displayed the picture inside. Fitted into one of the covers and framed by a mat of red velvet was a likeness of Abigail which made Anna gasp with surprise. There was Abigail's face, Abigail's smile, even the sprigs of roses on Abigail's new delaine dress. It was not a colored picture, to be sure, but otherwise it was just as good a picture as an oil painting, so Anna thought.
Such daguerreotypes as that of Abigail, and the ambrotypes and the ferrotypes which were advertised at almost the same time—so quickly were new kinds of pictures invented when once the process of photography was discovered—were the first portraits made by the camera. Compared with the beautiful photographs of to-day, these pictures taken during the ten years preceding the Civil War seem very poor and unsatisfactory; but to those who had never seen any likenesses except either the oil portraits or the silhouettes, these likenesses made by the camera were very wonderful.
It is rather surprising that the pictures taken when Anna was a child were as good as those still in existence show them to have been. It had been little more than ten years since Monsieur Daguerre had announced to the French Academy his invention of photography. Unlike most other inventors he actually wished all his discoveries to be made public, and as a result, the further discoveries of other men greatly hastened the development of the art.
In 1839, when Daguerre announced his discovery, he exposed his picture one hour and twelve minutes. This, of course, meant that it could not be used for portraits until the exposure could be reduced to a reasonable length. The use of different chemicals from those Daguerre used soon brought the time of exposure to thirty minutes; but one of the newspapers of the day says that the portraits taken then were "terrific likenesses of the human visage."
By 1850 such improvements had been made that one writer says that in the large cities cameras were as common as hand organs, and that the pictures were no longer "terrific." The credit for all this surely belongs to the far-seeing inventor who asked that he might give to the public all that he had found out, in order that other men might build on his discoveries.
After seeing three of these new pictures, it was no wonder that Anna could hardly wait until the next day to go to the photographer's herself. That night at bedtime she said to her mother, "I suppose, if my hair is going to look black in the picture, I could have black curls if you were willing to do up my hair on rags."
"Do you really want me to?" asked her mother, hoping Anna would decide against the curls.
"Of course I don't. I was just joking. I want Aunt Anna to have a real picture of me," replied Anna.
The first thing the next morning Anna wanted to know when they should go to the photographer's.
"Right away after dinner I think will be the best time," her mother answered.
Accordingly, as early in the afternoon as possible, Anna dressed to have her picture taken. As this was back in 1853, Anna wore, although she was only twelve years old, a full, ruffled skirt which came almost to the tops of her brown gaiter boots. The boots were her special pride, and as they were the very first she had ever owned with kid vamps and cloth tops, she did hope they would show in the picture. She wore her best white guimpe, which was cut in what was called a half-low neck; her sprigged muslin, which had very large, flowing sleeves; and her new white muslin undersleeves, which had been a present from Aunt Anna. Her hair was parted in the middle and held in place on the sides by a round comb.
"Do I look all right?" Anna asked, turning slowly for her mother to inspect her.
"Yes, I think so, and to me you look very nice," her mother answered. "Don't you think you'll need your galoshes? The showers last night have left the streets very muddy."
"I'll wear them, for I'm sure I don't want anything to happen to my beautiful boots," said Anna, and so she buckled on a pair of the clumsy rubber overshoes which they wore in those days.
Anna wanted a full length picture; her mother said little, but preferred the head and shoulders only, as the face then would be so much larger and plainer. Finally it was decided to have the little girl seated in a quaintly carved high-backed chair. In those early days of photography Anna must keep still two minutes—one hundred and twenty seconds—instead of one second, and so it was really better to sit than to stand.
When Anna was seated, she folded her hands, and held her head very high. The photographer said her position seemed a little stiff, and so he turned her head slightly to one side and gave her the choice of a stuffed bird or a paper rose to hold in her hands. Anna chose the rose because it was pink and matched the roses in her new sprigged muslin dress. She forgot that the picture would be all black and white anyway. She felt more at ease when she had something to hold and was sure she could sit as still as a stone for one hundred twenty seconds or even twice that.
The photographer went behind the great, awkward machine which he called a camera and covered up his head and part of the camera, with what looked to Anna like a tablecloth. She almost laughed, and the photographer, who was looking through the camera, told her almost sharply not to smile so much because it made her open her mouth.
"Say 'Flip' to make your mouth small and get it into shape again," he directed.
Anna said "Flip," anxious at the same time to try "Flop" to see if it would make a large mouth. It was just as well she did not delay matters just then by trying, for only a very little later she actually read in the Boston Transcript: "For a small mouth 'Flip,' for a large mouth 'Cabbage.'"
"All ready," said the man at last, after he had taken his head from under the shawl several times to arrange the folds of Anna's skirt, to turn her head a little more, or to straighten her shoulders. Then he slipped the plate for the picture into place in the camera and said, "Now look pleasant."
Anna did her best to do so, but her mouth felt stiff, and she wanted both to wink and to swallow, and, worst of all, her nose itched. It seemed one hundred twenty minutes instead of one hundred twenty seconds to the little girl, but at last the photographer said, "All done."
In those early days of photography the completed picture was the very plate which had been placed in the camera. They did not know then how to print from the plate as photographers do now, and so the plate on which the image was made was developed and "fixed" and then mounted under glass in such little cases as Abigail's. Only one picture could be made at a time, and pictures were consequently expensive.
It did not take long, however, to develop a daguerreotype and mount it. Soon Anna was looking at her own picture. She thought it very good indeed and secretly felt it more elegant than Abigail's, because she was seated and showed the whole figure, and Abigail's was only of head and shoulders.
"Good!" said Anna's father when he saw it. "I didn't believe there was much in this new process of photography, but there is. Monsieur Daguerre and all those who have made improvements on his discovery certainly deserve great honor. This is really a picture of my little girl. If this is Aunt Anna's, then I must have another to keep myself."
"It really is a good picture of Anna, isn't it?" said Mrs. Holman as her husband passed it back to her. Then, as she looked again at the picture, she laughed merrily. "It is a very good picture of the galoshes, too."
"The galoshes!" exclaimed Anna.
"The galoshes!" said her father.
"Didn't I take them off?" asked Anna.
"It must be that you didn't," replied her mother. "Never mind; it must be a very fine picture of you yourself or we should have seen the galoshes sooner."
Anna wondered if her Aunt Anna would notice the overshoes. The present reached her aunt in her far-off western home on Christmas day.
"I am delighted with the picture," she wrote. "It is like having a visit from my dear little niece. It seems as if she could speak to me if she wished. What a lovely dress, and what a lovely guimpe! Really, I am so pleased with the picture that I even admire the galoshes."
Anna had many other pictures taken before she was grown up, but she said she always felt the marvel of sitting before a camera for the sun to reflect and imprint her features on a plate which she could not see. Indeed, the faithfulness and the certainty of the result always made her declare that she could never have her picture taken without recalling the lines which Lucy Larcom wrote after her first daguerreotype was made:
"Oh, what if thus our evil deeds
Are mirrored on the sky,
And every line of our wild lives
Daguerreotyped on high."
[THE STORY OF THE REAPER]
"What if Cyrus McCormick should be able to make his reaper really work and we could cut all that wheat by machinery! No more dreadful backaches then in harvest time!" said Ezra Harding, as he stood looking out of the back door of a Virginia farmhouse one bright morning in June in the year 1832.
He saw nothing of the beauty all around him; all he saw was acre upon acre of yellow wheat ready to be harvested. How he dreaded the harvesting! It meant the hardest work his father ever asked him to do. Help was so scarce that even Ezra, the youngest of the five Harding boys, though he was only fifteen, had to do a man's work. It made Ezra feel almost eighty to think about the back-breaking work that was to begin the next morning.
At that time all the wheat in the world was cut by hand, and on that account there was not enough raised so that everybody could have white bread. In the old world the peasants used chiefly the sickle to cut the wheat; in the new world the farmers preferred the scythe and cradle. To harvest wheat means both to cut it and to tie the long stalks into bundles, or sheaves, for the drying which is necessary before the wheat kernels are threshed out. Hay can be pitched about hit-or-miss, but not so the wheat. It must be tied up in an orderly fashion so that as it dries it can be gathered into the barns without shaking out and losing too many of the wheat kernels.
The Old Way of Reaping
Ezra knew his part would be to swing a cradle scythe. This was a rather broad scythe with a wooden frame attached which was called a cradle. This cradle was nothing more than a set of wooden fingers parallel with the scythe, which helped to lay the cut grain straight in the rows because they collected the grain and carried it to the end of the stroke. The straighter it fell, the easier it was to bundle it. The contrivance was clumsy and Ezra disliked it very much. However, he was thankful he did not have to follow the men who mowed the grain and do the bundling and tying. That work he knew was the most back-breaking of all.
Ezra was feeling anything but cheerful when he saw his father come out of the barn with a smile on his face.
"What do you think I heard last night at Lexington Court House?" his father asked, coming up the path. "Cyrus McCormick is going to try his new reaping machine here in Lexington in Farmer Ruff's wheat field to-day. I want to see the trial. We'll all go over, if you boys like."
Like to go? Indeed they would, and they thought of nothing but the possibility of a successful reaping machine all through breakfast time.
Late in the season the preceding year Cyrus McCormick had created a sensation by cutting six acres of oats in an afternoon at Steele's Tavern near his home eighteen miles north of the Hardings' farm. None of the Hardings had seen that event, but they had been deeply interested not only because they would welcome a successful reaping machine, but also because the young man's father, Robert McCormick, was a friend of Mr. Harding, and they knew of the repeated trials and failures of the father's reaping machine. In fact, Robert McCormick had worked for fifteen years on a reaper which he had tried for the last time in that same season of 1831 and then had reluctantly put away forever as a failure.
"I still believe a successful reaping machine is possible, but somebody else will have to make it," he had said sadly.
The Hardings knew that the son Cyrus, who had worked for years with his father, had not given up even then, and, begging his father to leave one small patch of grain for him to use for trial, had started a new machine on a different principle, and late in the season had tried it at home with only his own family to watch its working.
"It is a success!" they had said one to another, but they dared say very little outside because it was still far from satisfactory.
Mr. Harding had learned from the older McCormick that it had not run smoothly, but that it had cut the grain without tangling it and had left it on a platform from which the raker could take it off in good order for the bundling. To the McCormicks, however, it had been a proof that the machine could be made a success, and a few days later, after making some changes, Cyrus McCormick had cut the six acres of oats at Steele's Tavern in one afternoon. It was then too late in the season for other demonstrations, and the Hardings had heard nothing more about the invention until the day before the trial at Lexington in Farmer Ruff's field.
An hour before the time set for the trial of the reaper Ezra Harding and his brothers were at the appointed place. They watched the crowd gather. There were Negroes, and farm laborers, and some owners of farms. Most of the people around Ezra, to his surprise, not only seemed to expect the machine to fail, but actually hoped it would. He could not understand why until he heard two rough, ignorant fellows talk about losing their chance to earn their bread if machines could be made to do the work of men.
The First Type of McCormick Reaper
"We'll smash the things," they said, "before we'll have the bread taken out of our mouths by any such contraptions."
Ezra thought it strange they should oppose the invention for he knew how anxious his father was that it should be a success. His father said machinery meant the possibility of larger crops, and therefore not less work, but more work and more wealth for all. Ezra was puzzling over the strange stupidity of these men who could not see what larger crops would mean, and who seemed to want to go on in their old back-breaking toil, at the same pitifully small wages,—for the pay of these days was actually less than a nickel an hour,—when the machine came in view drawn by two horses. Two Negroes were leading the horses because the machine made such a clattering noise that it frightened them. About a hundred spectators had gathered by that time. The crowd jeered at the sight of the strange machine.
"It's drunk," they said, and laughed uproariously at their own wit.
On it came, turned into the field, and began in a short time to cut the wheat. It did not work well. The field was rough and hilly, and the heavy, cumbersome machine careened like a ship in a gale. The crowd ran up and down the field alongside the machine, hooting at the top of their voices and calling the reaper all kinds of names. The Negroes were doubled up with laughter at the slewing of the unwieldy machine. One man said to another with decision, "Give me the old cradle yet."
Another said scornfully, "It's a humbug!"
Farmer Ruff, rough by nature as well as by name, ran, too, shouting, "Stop! Stop! your machine is rattling the heads off my wheat!"
It did look as if the trial would end in complete failure. Much as Ezra wished the machine to succeed he had no confidence that it was going to, and he turned to see if he could read his father's thoughts. Just as he turned he saw a fine-looking man on horseback ride up to the jeering crowd. It was Hon. William Taylor. Taking in the situation at a glance he changed everything instantly.
"Pull down the fence," he ordered, pointing to the division fence between his field and that of Farmer Ruff, "and cross over into my wheat field. I'll give you a fair chance to try your machine!"
This opportunity was eagerly seized by the young inventor, and soon he was ready to begin again the trial of his precious machine. Mr. Taylor's field was smoother and less hilly than that of Farmer Ruff. The machine began to cut the grain successfully. Once around! Ezra could scarcely credit his eyes. Round and round the machine went—cutting, cutting, cutting. The heavy clack-clack of the machine was sweet music to the little group of those who were eager for its success.
The crowd became quieter as the grain continued to fall, and many after an hour or two lost all interest in watching and went home. For nearly five hours the reaper was driven around Mr. Taylor's field, and the six acres of wheat were cut in that time—the first wheat in the United States to be cut by machinery. No wonder the young inventor was proud of the accomplishment. His machine had done in less than half a day what he knew would have required, according to the method generally used in Europe, twenty-four peasants with sickles.
After the trial was over, Mr. Harding and Ezra joined the excited little group around the inventor.
"Your reaper is a success," Ezra heard Robert McCormick say to his son, "and it makes me proud to have a son do what I could not do!" Ezra felt like throwing his cap and cheering. What a joy to have a machine which could do that back-breaking work he had had to do in harvesting the grain!
That night the machine was hauled to the court house square in Lexington. There it was examined by a crowd of curious people who had heard of the successful trial in the afternoon. One of the men who was specially interested in the machine was Professor Bradshaw of the Female Academy of Lexington, a thoughtful man whose judgment was greatly respected in the community. In his usual impressive manner he fairly astounded the bystanders by the wholly improbable statement, "That machine is worth—a—hundred—thousand—dollars!"
"A hundred thousand dollars!" repeated Mr. Harding when the remark was told him the next day. "I think this time Professor Bradshaw is wrong. Cyrus McCormick will be disappointed, surely, if he expects any such large returns from his invention. The great inventors have not become very rich men even when the invention, like the cotton gin, has caused a revolution in a whole industry."
This was when Cyrus McCormick was twenty-three years old. Before he was an old man the reaper had proved itself worth more millions than the predicted thousands, and Ezra and his father had many a laugh over Mr. Harding's criticism of Professor Bradshaw. However, at the time the astounding remark was made, not even the inventor himself dreamed of the complete change in methods of farming which the reaper would make all over the country. Nobody, indeed, could realize that within the life time of the inventor it would be possible for the farmers of the United States to raise enough wheat to feed the whole world. Most people, naturally enough, perhaps, felt as did Miss Polly Carson when she saw the reaper dragged along the road on the way to Farmer Ruff's field. Years later when she told the story of that day she said:
"I thought it a right smart curious sort of thing, but that it wouldn't amount to much."
The successful trial of the reaper was in 1832, when the United States was about fifty years old. For the next ten years Cyrus McCormick was preaching reapers but he did not succeed in selling them. They seemed very costly to the farmer; and, moreover, they were not the perfect machines we know to-day, machines which work as if they had brains of their own. Not until 1840 was Cyrus McCormick successful in selling the reapers, which he made himself at his home. Then he sold two machines for fifty dollars each. Two years later he sold seven for one hundred dollars each. Soon he could sell hundreds.
The West Virginia home was not a good location for making the reapers as it was both difficult and expensive, with the poor railroad facilities of the day, to ship the machines to the great West where it was already plain that the largest number would be used. Accordingly Cyrus McCormick moved nearer his best market, establishing himself first in Cincinnati, but two years later, in 1847, choosing the very new, very muddy, very unattractive little town which has since become the immense city of Chicago. History has shown the wisdom of his choice. Chicago soon became the greatest distributing center of the West, and as the reaper was necessary to work successfully the big wheat fields, it was no uncommon sight as early as the sixties to see, moving out from Chicago, a whole train loaded with nothing but showy bright-red reapers.
McCormick's Reaping Machine
As advertised in The Working Farmer, 1852. Notice that a man rides on the machine to rake off the grain.
During the ten years while Cyrus McCormick was struggling to introduce his reaper, Ezra Harding grew to admire more and more the tall, handsome, powerful man who never lost his courage. Ezra believed in reapers almost as fully as did Mr. McCormick himself; and when Mr. McCormick moved to Chicago, Ezra followed him to help make the wonderful machines.
In the years between the first successful trial and the time when Ezra went to Chicago so many changes had been made in the reaper that Miss Polly Carson would hardly have recognized it, had she seen it coming down the road. When the machine was tried in Farmer Ruff's field the grain was cut by a cutting bar similar to that on a mowing machine, then it was caught by a reel and carried to a platform from which it was raked to be tied in bundles. Two men were needed with each machine; one walked beside the horses to drive them, the other walked beside the platform to rake off the wheat for the bundling. Not very long afterward Mr. McCormick added seats for both driver and raker. One of the next big changes was to take off the raker and his seat and put in their place an "iron man." This was really a long iron finger moved by the turning wheels, which did the work of the raker, and automatically pushed off the cut grain in untied bundles.
Tying, or binding, the bundles remained for years the hardest part of the harvesting. It was the custom to tie the sheaves with a crude rope made of the grain. This hard, back-breaking work required both strength and skill and could be endured only by the strongest men. Even Ezra Harding said:
"No genius will ever live who can make a machine throw a cord around a bundle of wheat and knot that cord securely."
In this, however, Ezra was wrong, for within twenty-five years from the time when the first reapers were sold Ezra saw added to the machine two steel arms which, driven by the revolution of the wheels, caught each bundle of grain before it left the platform on which it was collected, whirled a wire tight around it, fastened the two ends together with a twist, cut it loose, and tossed it on the ground.
There was then only one complaint made by the farmers. When the grain was fed to cattle they were often injured by pieces of wire. This trouble was remedied later by substituting twine for wire, adding a very ingenious contrivance for knotting the twine, and then the McCormick Reaper and Self-Binder might be said to be perfected.
One man alone, to drive the reaper, could then do what, only twenty years before, had required twenty men. Moreover, the harvesting of a bushel of wheat which required under the slow snip, snip of a sickle three hours could be done in ten minutes! Long before Ezra Harding was an old man he saw moving out of the Chicago freight yards a train loaded with nothing but reapers, carrying these machines not only over the United States but even to Russia and China. He saw the wheat crop of this country doubled and trebled and quadrupled; he saw the time when even a poor man could have white bread to eat, because the cost of a loaf had been cut in two; he saw the reaper bring millions and millions of dollars to its inventor; and he saw not only this great wealth come to the man he himself had long admired, but also, while Cyrus McCormick was still in the prime of life, the honor and fame which have been denied many of the great inventors until after death.
[GRANDMA'S INTRODUCTION TO ELECTRIC CARS]
In 1891 when Harriet Lewis wrote just before her grandmother's annual visit:
"We have something in Portland this year that really will surprise you, Grandma," all the family laughed over her grandmother's answer.
"If you mean the electric cars which I have been reading about in the Press," so her grandmother's letter ran, "remember that I have already seen street cars running up and down hill in San Francisco without any horses to draw them, and that it won't be any more surprising to see them running all alone in Portland, even if it is electricity this time which makes them go."
"Can't astonish Grandma, can we?" said Harriet's father, smiling.
It certainly was hard to do so. Grandma had always been a traveler. She was born in Bath, Maine, in the days when Maine was famous for its ship building, and Maine sailing vessels went all around the world. Her father had been a sea captain and Grandma had been to China with him before she was eighteen; her husband also had been a sea captain and she had been around the world twice with him. Grandma had seen so much and was always so interested in what was going on in the world that when she went to Portland to visit her oldest son the family there used to say jokingly:
"We must find something new to show Grandma or she won't feel that she has been anywhere."
They had all expected Grandma to think it as wonderful as they did that electricity could take the place of horses, and had expected her to be very anxious to see the new cars of which so much had been written. Evidently she did not think them very much ahead of the cable cars.
"Don't be disappointed, Harriet," said Mr. Lewis to his little ten-year old daughter, who was Grandma's namesake. "Wait until Grandma has seen the new cars; perhaps then she will think it as marvelous as we do that electricity can be harnessed to make these cars slide along the rails. She never has believed that electric cars would be a success."
"I remember last year when she was here," said Harriet's mother, turning to the little girl's father, "how she used to say, 'I don't like horse cars on these Maine hills. You ought to have cable cars. They are the only proper things for hills!' and how you used to say, 'Wait until next year, Mother, and you shall see something better than cable cars.'"
"She always answered, I recall," added Mr. Lewis, "'John, never in my lifetime or yours will electricity be anything but a mystery and a danger. It may be used to some extent for lighting, but, mark my words, it can never be made to run heavily loaded cars. It is too absurd to consider.'"
When Grandma reached Portland, Harriet and her father met her at the station, and drove her home behind steady old Prince, who had drawn the family carriage for years. As they jogged along on the way to the house they met an electric car.
"I really don't see why it should go, but it is plain that it does go. If they keep on going for another twenty-four hours, I am going to have a ride in one to-morrow morning," said Grandma.
"Oh Mother, Mother!" exclaimed the son. "You do like to try new things, don't you? Here I drove Prince to the station just so that you wouldn't have to ride in one of these cars until you became used to seeing them slide along driven by what you call that dangerous fluid."
"Well, I'm going to ride once anyway. I've always tried all the different ways of getting about that I could. Why, I was the very first person from our town to ride in a street car in Boston. That was way back in 1856 in a little bobbing horse car drawn by two horses harnessed tandem. Lots of people then made fun of the little cars, I remember. They said the omnibus was better. They used to have races between car and omnibus sometimes to prove which was better. How the passengers on the one ahead would cheer! In the spring, when the snow was going off, the omnibus, which would still be on runners, would get stuck in the mud and the car would win; in the winter, if there was drifting snow, the car would get stuck and the omnibus would go gliding by with sleigh bells ringing and passengers waving their hands. Oh, it was quite exciting, but the omnibuses were not used a great while after the cars were introduced, as the cars were really more comfortable, more convenient, and could make better time."
Several times during the first day of her visit Grandma exclaimed, "I am thankful not to see any poor horses straining to draw those cars!"
Pity for the horses had always interfered with Grandma's enjoyment in riding on the horse cars. When she and Harriet had been on their accustomed rides, Harriet always had taken pains to tell when a third horse was added to the usual pair to help draw a car up a hill.
"Now he's on, Grandma," she would say when the car stopped at the foot of a hard hill and a boy brought up the horse which had been waiting there and hooked the heavy tugs to the whiffletree bar so that the third horse could run along beside the others, although just outside the rails. "It's a big horse," she would often add.
But even this had not satisfied Grandma. She had been in San Francisco when the cable cars were first put in use and she believed them the only car suitable for a hilly city.
"You ought to have the cable cars," she had said many a time. However, before she had watched the electric cars a half day Grandma went so far as to say, "If you could be sure there would be no danger from electricity and be sure of power enough I don't know why these wouldn't do just as well as the cable cars."
"Tell me about the cable cars, won't you, Grandma? What makes them go?" asked Harriet, now old enough to be interested in the difference between the systems.
"The cable makes them go," answered her grandmother. "It is an endless iron chain which the engine at the central station keeps running all the time. It travels between the rails in an open channel or groove just below ground. The car is carried along by being fastened to this cable. What is it you call the driver of your new cars—a motorman? The man who drives a cable car is called a gripman. It is his business to work the 'grip,' a stout iron contrivance which must catch hold of the cable when the car is to be carried along and must be loosened when the car is to be stopped."
"Is San Francisco the only city where they have those cars?" asked Harriet.
"Oh, no," answered Grandma. "They have them now in several of the other large cities. San Francisco was the first city to have them. The hills there are so steep that it was out of the question to use horses. Something had to be invented, and Andrew S. Hallidie planned this system which has been used successfully ever since 1873."
"Weren't there any people in those days who thought the cable cars were dangerous, Mother?" asked Harriet's father slyly.
"Oh, dear me, yes," replied his mother. "The gripman himself lost his courage, I remember, on one of the very first trips and stopped his car at the top of his first steep hill. He got off the car and said that, as he had a wife and children, he did not think it would be right for him to take the car down such a hill. The passengers said it was not a case of right or wrong but a case of being scared, and they insisted upon his getting on again and taking them to their journey's end."
"There goes another electric car, Grandma!" said Harriet who was looking out the window. "It goes a good deal faster than a horse car, doesn't it?"
"I should think it did," answered Grandma, "In contrast with travel on horse cars, going as fast as that must seem like flying. How can it be possible to get power enough to drive a big car like that!"
"It comes right along that overhead wire," answered Harriet's father.
"Oh, yes, I know that from what I have read," continued Grandma. "And it is conducted to the car along that long iron rod which runs from the overhead wire to the car. What is it you call that?"
"The trolley," said Mr. Lewis.
"Then what really happens after the electricity has reached the car?"
"This current of electricity runs to those cylinders in front of the motorman. Then it is where it can be controlled. By the turning of a crank the motorman can turn on the power to start the motor and drive the car ahead, or he can shut it off and make the car stand still. Just as steam power turns the wheels of the locomotive, so electric power turns the wheels of these cars."
"It is very mysterious after all," said Grandma.
"It certainly is," assented her son. "Oliver Wendell Holmes says it is like witchcraft. Have you read his poem which says:
'Since then on many a car you'll see
A broomstick, plain as plain can be;
On every stick there's a witch astride—
The string, you see, to her leg is tied!'"
Grandma and Harriet laughed.
"How fast are these cars going?" asked Grandma.
"About ten miles an hour including the stops. Probably the rate without stops is about fifteen miles," answered Mr. Lewis.
"There never could be power enough in electricity to drive the car much faster than that, I suppose?" said Grandma.
"Yes, they have already gone considerably faster," replied her son. "I was reading only last night that back in 1880 when Thomas Edison first began his experiments with electricity as a motive power on his own private track at Menlo Park, he drove his little electric train more than twice as fast. In June 1880, Grosvenor Lowry wrote, 'Have spent part of a day at Menlo, and all is glorious. I have ridden at forty miles an hour on Mr. Edison's electric railway—and we ran off the track.'"
"It is dangerous after all, isn't it?" commented Grandma.
"Most people do not think so. That was when they were experimenting and of course accidents were bound to happen. In the three years since Richmond introduced the system of electric cars more than a hundred other cities have introduced it; and a hundred more are putting it in, I suppose, at this present moment."
"We'll ride to-morrow in one of the new cars, Harriet," said Grandma.
"Goody," said Harriet, "I love to ride in them. I'd like to ride on Mr. Edison's own electric railway, and go forty miles an hour."
"I don't doubt you would, puss," said her father, "but I think he is not using that at all now. He considers the electric railway a success and he is working now on something which his friends say will make it possible to run a horseless carriage without the help of either rails or a trolley."
"Oh, surely that never can be, John," said Grandma.
"I don't know. I should have said the same thing ten years ago about a horseless street car, I think. Edison's friends remind us that first it was the horse without the carriage, then it was the horse and the carriage, and now they say it is surely going to be the carriage without the horse. Wonders do not seem to cease; it may come true."
That night about midnight there was a splintering crash which Grandma thought was only a short distance from her window. Something had certainly happened in the street, but there was no outcry and all was still again in a few minutes after the crash. Grandma could not explain it, but it did not worry her and she went to sleep again.
Very early in the morning she was wakened again by unusual noises on her side of the house. Going to the window she was surprised to see an electric car across the gutter, stopped apparently in its course by a broken telegraph pole. How had it come there? It seemed to have come down the track on the hill opposite, and then to have come without any track at all straight across the street at the foot of the hill until it crashed into the pole. The front of the car was considerably broken. It had evidently run into the pole with force enough to snap that off short and spoil the front of the car.
Grandma watched with interest the crew which had been sent out to get the injured car back again on the track and take it to the car barn before most people were stirring. They had a smaller car to which they securely fastened the runaway car. Then the little service car pulled the runaway out of the gutter, across the street, and on to the track once more. The last Grandma saw of the wrecked car it was at the top of the hill still being pulled along by the other car.
"There's no question of power," said Grandma to herself. "One small car can run along with a big car trailing after it as easily as if it were alone. There is only one question left in my mind, and that is the question of control of the power. To see a big car right across the gutter surely does not look as if the power were under control."
At breakfast Grandma told what she had heard and seen.
"Do you know what made the car run away?" she asked her son.
"Yes, I went out to the street last night after the crash and found out. There was just one man out there and he didn't feel very much like talking, but he did finally tell me what had happened. The man I found was the conductor."
"What had become of the motorman? Was he hurt?" asked Mrs. Lewis quickly.
"Nobody was hurt, and nothing was injured except the pole, and the front of the car, and the conductor's feelings. It seems that on the last trip last evening there was nobody on the car except the conductor and the motorman, and so, though it is against the rules, the conductor offered to let the motorman get off when they reached his home, and to take the car himself up to the end of the line and then back a little way to the car barn. His own home is close by the barn. All went well until the new driver was reaching the end of the line just opposite us. Then the trolley slipped off and the car came to a standstill. The conductor stepped off to put the trolley back in place, and he easily and quickly swung it back where it belonged, when—Great Scott!—the car sailed off and left him! Went to the end of the rails and then had momentum enough to roll straight across the street plump into the pole."
"What made it go?" asked Harriet, completely mystified.
Harriet was not the only one of those present who was puzzled, and they all listened very carefully when Mr. Lewis said, "Because the conductor forgot to shut off the motor when he left the car. As there wasn't any power on when he stepped off, naturally he felt no need of shutting it off, but, unfortunately for him, there was plenty of power as soon as the trolley was on again."
Harriet began to laugh.
"I see! I see! How easy it was to start a real runaway! Nothing to do but to put the trolley on when everything was right for the car to go ahead."
"Exactly," said her father.
"How surprised that poor conductor must have felt," said Grandma.
"How mortified he must have felt," said Mamma.
"He must have felt the way I did when I left the water running and flooded the bathroom," said Harriet sadly.
"I think he had all those feelings," said Mr. Lewis, "judging from what he said last night."
"Well, it proves there's power enough to run a car even without smooth rails," said Grandma. "And perhaps it proves it is well controlled if it runs the car straight ahead even when there is nobody aboard to drive it."
"I hope this strange introduction to electric cars won't make any difference about your enjoying your ride to-day, Mother," said Mr. Lewis.
"Difference? Why should it? There won't be any more conductors taking the place of motormen to-day, I know," said Grandma.
"Probably not," replied Mr. Lewis, laughing.
"I'm perfectly satisfied with the way the car behaved," said Grandma. "We'll ride and ride to-day, Harriet."
And ride and ride they surely did. Grandma liked the motion and she was interested in all the details of running the car, even in how the whistle was operated, and how the end of the trolley was connected to the car.
"My introduction to electric cars may have been peculiar," said Grandma that night, "but my acquaintance thus far is entirely satisfactory. I really think I know how they are run and I shouldn't wonder if I could run one as well as the conductor on the car last night."
"If you let the motorman get off and you run the car for him, you won't get off to put the trolley on unless you have shut off the motor, will you, Grandma?" asked Harriet.
Everybody laughed to think how the car had run away and left the astonished conductor in the road unable to stop it; but Grandma said, "Runaways or no runaways, the electric car is the marvel of the age. It does not seem as if the mind of man could devise anything more wonderful than this harnessing of electricity; but yet it may be that Harriet will sometime ride in one of the horseless carriages her father spoke of yesterday. If they ever do have such things of course they'll be very, very dangerous, but I do wish"—and everybody knew what Grandma was going to wish—"that I could have just one ride in one myself."