McCormick was at this time a youth of twenty-two. He had been one of four pink, helpless babies, born in 1809, who became, each in his own world, the greatest leader of his day—Darwin, Gladstone, Lincoln, and McCormick. Like Lincoln, McCormick first learned to breathe in a long cabin—but in Virginia. He was bred from a fighting race. His father had wrenched a living from the rocks of Virginia for his family of nine. His grandfather had fought the English in the Revolution. His great-grandfather had been an Indian fighter in Pennsylvania; and his great-great-grandfather battled with a flint-lock against the soldiers of James II., at the siege of Londonderry.
The McCormick family, in 1809, had a good deal of what was then called prosperity. They had enough to eat—a roof that kept out the rain—1,800 acres of land, or near-land—three saw-mills—two flour-mills, and a distillery. They had very little money, because there was little to be had. In the whole United States there was barely as much money as would buy half of the New York Subway.
The first American McCormicks had a thousand dollars or more when they resolved to leave Ireland, and they were Scotch enough to invest the whole amount in linen, which they sold at a high profit in Philadelphia. This capital enabled them to acquire a small stock of books, tools, and comforts, which were passed along from father to son.
Robert McCormick—the father of Cyrus, was himself a remarkable Virginian. He was quick with his hands in shaping iron and wood. In fact, he was fairly famous in his county as the inventor of a hemp-brake, a clover-sheller, a bellows and threshing machine. His mind was greedy for knowledge; and it was his habit, when the seven children were asleep, to explore into the mysteries of astronomy until his candle had flickered its life out. Twenty or more of his letters, which I have seen, are well written and with a fine use of bookish words.
The one persistent ambition of his life was to invent a reaper. It is also true, and a titbit of a fact for those who believe in prenatal influences, that during the year in which Cyrus H. McCormick was born, his father first began the actual construction of a reaping machine.
Especially during the harvest months, the topic of conversation in the McCormick home was whether the dream of “reaping grain with horses” could ever come true. “Reaper,” was one of the first words that baby Cyrus learned to say; and his favourite play-toy, when he grew older, was the wreck of his father’s reaper that wouldn’t reap, which lay in rusty disgrace near the barn-door.
“Often I have seen Robert McCormick standing over his machine,” said one of his neighbours. “He would be studying and thinking, drawing down his under lip, as was his habit when he was puzzling over anything.” His friends ridiculed him for wasting so much time on a foolish toy, until he became half ashamed of it himself and quit his experimenting in the daytime. But at night, he and Cyrus hammered away in the little log workshop, as though they were a pair of conspirators.
The romantic mystery of these midnight labours made an indelible mark on the brain of the boy Cyrus. He grew up to be serious and self-contained—quite unlike the boys of the neighbourhood. He was not popular and never cared to be.
“Cyrus was a natural mechanical genius from a child,” said John Cash, who worked on the McCormick farm. “He invented the best hillside plough ever used in this country. He and his father would lock themselves up in the shop and work for hours on a reaping machine. The neighbours thought they were both unbalanced to have the idea of cutting grain with horses.”
Cyrus was always busy making or mending some piece of machinery. He abhorred the drudgery of the farm; but delighted in any work that had an idea behind it. He surprised his teacher one morning by bringing to school a twenty-inch globe of wood, which turned on its axis as the earth does, and had the seas and continents outlined in ink.