Brief biographies from American history, for the fifth and sixth grades

by Edna Henry Lee Turpin

Whitney was destined to be more successful in another undertaking. He thought that the United States ought to make its own firearms, and he succeeded in getting money advanced by the government to aid him in starting a factory near New Haven. He invented new methods which proved successful and profitable. His factory brought him fortune and his prosperous latter years were spent in his Connecticut home.

Another American benefactor of the farmer first and so of the whole country was Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the reaper. He was born in Virginia in 1809. In his boyhood, grain was cut with the sickle. It was gathered into bundles by hand, tied, and put up in stacks. The grain was separated from the straw and chaff by beating it with flails. This was slow and tiresome work.

Many men before McCormick tried to invent machines to reap grain. Some of the English machines were fairly successful. You would think that the English farmers would welcome the invention. Instead, they said that it would deprive laborers of work, and they threatened to kill the makers if they continued to manufacture these machines.

In sparsely-populated America people were on the lookout for labor-saving inventions; they welcomed the reaping machine which was invented by McCormick in 1831. This useful invention won both money and fame for Mr. McCormick; a part of his well-gained wealth was devoted to the endowment of schools.

In 1851 at the World’s Fair in London there was a trial of different reapers. Under unfavorable conditions, the McCormick machine did perfect work; at a timed trial it proved that it could cut twenty acres in a day. A farmer who was present broke his sickle across his knee, saying that it would no longer be needed. Wonderful improvements have been made in the reaper. There are great machines now on the prairie lands of the west which cut the grain, thresh it, and carry it from the fields in sacks ready for the mill.

Mowing-machines constructed on a plan similar to the reapers, cut grass, and horse-rakes and hay-forks handle the hay so cheaply that the production of hay now costs less than a fifth of what it did under the old methods. Flails, too, have been replaced by modern threshing machines.

The labor-saving machines used on a farm enable a few people to do with ease the work which formerly required the labor of many. As fewer men are required in the country, more are set free to engage in business and trade. For these purposes, they gather in cities, which have gained size and wealth that would have been impossible under old agricultural conditions.

Let us now consider the improvements in methods of communication. The carrying of letters and papers by the great postal system of our government, is done chiefly on the steam cars and steamboats, which have already been described. You know, however, that by means of the telegraph and the telephone messages can be transmitted much more promptly than by mail. Both these modes of communication are recent. Before they were invented, various methods were used to transmit intelligence quickly. You learned how, by the firing of cannon along the canal, in two hours it was announced in New York that the first boat was starting down the Erie Canal.

A thousand years ago, beacon-fires were lighted along the coasts of England to warn people of the approach of an enemy; a hundred years ago, similar signals were used in our own country. Sometimes a wood fire was kindled, sometimes a pot of tar was set on fire. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the semaphore was used to some extent. This consists of a horizontal bar, set on a high post. By changes in its position, according to a method of signals agreed upon, messages are sent. Flags are used for signals and messages are sent by placing flags of different colors and shapes in different positions; this is less practicable on land than at sea where the range of vision is uninterrupted. Another method of signaling is by mirrors to reflect the sunlight. But all these methods have inconveniences and are limited to comparatively short distances.

Early in the nineteenth century, scientists thought that electricity which can be conducted by wires from place to place might be utilized to carry messages. This was at last successfully accomplished by an American, Samuel Finley Breese Morse.