Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work

by Herbert Newton Casson

"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.