In this hour of debt and defeat Cyrus became the leader of the family. Here for the first time he showed that indomitable spirit which was, more than any other one thing, the secret of his success. At once he did what he had not felt was possible before—he began to make Reapers. Without money, without credit, without customers, he founded the first of the world's reaper factories in the little log workshop near his father's house. In the year of the iron failure, 1839, he gave a public exhibition on the farm of Joshua Smith, near the town of Staunton. With two men and a team of horses he cut two acres of wheat an hour. At this there was great applause, but no buyers.
The farmers of that day were not accustomed to the use of machinery. Their farm tools, for the most part, were so simple as to be made either by themselves or by the village blacksmith. That the Reaper did the work of ten men, they could not deny. But it was driven by an expert. "It's all very wonderful, but I'm running a farm, not a circus," thought the average spectator at these exhibitions. Also, there was in all Eastern States at that time a surplus of labor and a scarcity of money, both of which tended to retard the adoption of the Reaper.
Neither did the business men of Staunton pay any serious attention to it. There was a Samson Eager at that time who made wagons, a David Gilkerson who made furniture, a Jacob Kurtz who made spinning wheels, and an Absalom Brooks who made harness. But none of these men saw any fortune in the making of Reapers, and Staunton lost its great opportunity to be a manufacturing centre.
Failure was being heaped on failure, yet Cyrus McCormick hung to his Reaper as John Knox had to his Bible. He went back to the little log workshop with a fighting hope in his heart, and hammered away to make a still better machine.
This was the darkest period in the history of the McCormicks—from 1837 to 1840. Once a constable named John Newton rode up to the farm-house door with a summons, calling Cyrus and his father before the County Judge on account of a debt of $19.01. A teamster named John Brains had brought suit. His bill had been $72.00 and he had been paid more than three-fourths of the money. But the constable was so impressed with the honesty and industry of the McCormicks, that he rode back to town without having served the summons. A little later, Mr. John Brains received his money; and it may be said that had he accepted, instead, a five per cent interest in the Reaper, he would have become in twenty years or less one of the richest men in the county.
As it happened, not one of Cyrus McCormick's creditors thought of such an idea as seizing the Reaper, or the patent, which had been secured in 1834. If the queer-looking machine, which was regarded as part marvel and part freak, had been put up to auction in that neighborhood of farmers, very likely it would have found no bidders. There appeared to be one man only, a William Massie, who appreciated the ability of Cyrus McCormick and lent him sums of money on various urgent occasions.
But in 1840 a stranger rode from the north and drew rein in front of the little log workshop. In appearance he was a rough-looking man, but to Cyrus he was an angel of light. He had come to buy a Reaper. He had been one of the spectators at the Staunton exhibition, and he had resolved to risk $50 on one of the new machines. His name, which deserves to be recorded in the annals of the Reaper, was Abraham Smith.
REAPING WITH CRADLES IN ILLINOIS
Several weeks later came two other angels in disguise—farmers who had heard of the Reaper and who had ridden from their homes on the James River, a forty-mile journey on horseback through the Blue Ridge Mountains. These men had never seen a Reaper, but they had faith. They were notable men. Both ordered machines, and Cyrus McCormick accepted one of the orders only, as he was not satisfied with the way his Reaper worked in grain that was wet. It was apt to clog in the grooves that held the blade. Even in this darkest and most debt-ridden period of his life, McCormick was much more intent, apparently, upon making his Reapers work well than upon winning a fortune.