Also, in Illinois, McCormick saw what made his Scotch heart turn cold within him—he saw hogs and cattle feeding in the autumn wheat-fields, which could not be reaped for lack of labourers. Five million bushels of wheat had grown and ripened—enough to empty the horn of plenty into every farmer’s home. Men and women, children and grandmothers, toiled day and night to gather in the yellow food. But the short harvest-season rushed past so quickly that tons of it lay rotting under the hoofs of cattle.
It was a puzzling problem. It was too much prosperity—a new trouble for farmers. In Europe, men had been plenty and acres scarce. Here, acres were plenty and men scarce. Ripe grain—the same in all countries, will not wait. Unless it is gathered quickly—in from four to ten days, it breaks down and decays. So, even to the dullest minds, it was clear that there must be some better way of snatching in the ripened grain.
The sight of the trampled wheat goaded McCormick almost into a frenzy of activity. He rode on horseback through Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, and New York, proclaiming his harvest gospel and looking for manufacturers who would build his reapers. From shop to shop he went with the zeal of a Savonarola.
A MODEL OF THE FIRST PRACTICAL REAPER
One morning, in the little town of Brockport, New York, he found the first practical men who appreciated his invention—Dayton S. Morgan and William H. Seymour. Morgan was a handy young machinist who had formed a partnership with Seymour—a prosperous store-keeper. They listened to McCormick with great interest and agreed to make a hundred reapers. By this decision they both later became millionaires, and also entered history as the founders of the first reaper factory in the world.
Altogether, in the two years after he left Virginia, McCormick sold 240 reapers. This was Big Business; but it was only a morsel in proportion to his appetite. Neither was it satisfactory. He found himself tangled in a snarl of trouble because of bad iron, stupid workmen, and unreliable manufacturers. He cut the Gordian knot by building a factory of his own at Chicago.
This was one of the wisest decisions of his life, though at the time it appeared to be a disastrous mistake. Chicago, in 1847, showed no signs of its present greatness. As a city, it was a ten-year-old experiment, built in a swamp, without a railway or a canal. It was ugly and dirty, with a river that ran in the wrong direction; but it was busy. It was the link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes—a central market where wheat was traded for lumber and furs for iron. It had no history—no ancient families clogging up the streets with their special privileges. And best of all, it was a place where a big new idea was actually preferred to a small old one.
Chicago did not look at McCormick with dead eyes and demand a certified cheque from his ancestors. It sized him up in a few swift glances and saw a thick-set, ruddy man, with the physique of a heavy-weight wrestler, dark hair that waved in glossy furrows, and strong eyes that struck you like a blow. It glanced at his reaper and saw a device to produce more wheat. More wheat meant more business, so Chicago said ——
“Glad to see you. You’re the right man and you’re in the right place. Come in and get busy.” William B. Ogden, the first Mayor of Chicago, listened to his story for two minutes, then asked him how much he wanted for a half interest. McCormick had little money and no prestige. Ogden had a surplus of both. So a partnership was arranged, and the new firm plunged toward prosperity by selling $50,000 worth of reapers for the next harvest.