“No,” said his friend, “and whoever can invent one will make a fortune.”
Hussey forsook his candle machine, set to work upon a reaper, and within a year had one in the fields. Then came a twenty-five-year war with McCormick, which was waged furiously in the Patent Office, the courts, and a hundred wheat-fields. Hussey won the opening battle by arriving first at the Patent Office, although his machine, as claimed by McCormick, was two years younger. By 1841 Hussey had sold reapers in five states, and ten years later he shared the honours with McCormick at the London World’s Fair.
Both machines were very crude and unsatisfactory. Hussey’s had a better cutting apparatus and McCormicks was more complete. In the long run, each adopted the devices of the other, and a better reaper was evolved. Before many years, it became apparent that Hussey was outclassed. By 1858 he was left so far behind that he lost his interest in reapers and invented a steam-plough.
His first machine was “really a mower,” says Merritt Finley Miller, one of the two professors who have written on harvesting machinery. It lacked the master-wheel, the reel and the divider, without which the grain cannot be rightly handled. When Hussey gave up the contest, his invention was bought for $200,000 by William F. Ketchum and others, who adapted it into a mowing-machine.
“Hussey was a very peculiar man,” said Ralph Emerson. “His machine was fairly good, but it was a failure in the market, because he would not put on a reel. He refused to do this, saying he did not invent a reel, and it would be a falsehood if he put one on. He said that it was contrary to his principles to sell anything that he had not invented.
“On one occasion I went to buy a shop licence from him. ‘Have you a thousand dollars in your pocket?’ he asked. ‘No,’ said I. ‘Can you get me three thousand dollars by daylight to-morrow morning?’ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I can get it by noon.’ ‘Well,’ said Hussey, ‘I want to be very reasonable with you. If you’ll pay me one thousand dollars before you leave the house, or twenty-five hundred dollars before daybreak to-morrow, I’ll sell you a licence. Otherwise, it will cost you twelve thousand dollars.’
“Several days later I paid him twelve thousand dollars, and as he handed me the licence, he said—‘Now, don’t say that I never offered you this for a thousand dollars.’”
Hussey’s adventurous life was snapped short by a tragic death. While he was on a train at Baltimore, a little girl was crying for a drink of water. The kind-hearted old sailor-mechanic got off the train, brought her a glass of water, and on his way to return the glass, he slipped and fell between the moving wheels.
Of all the men who fought McCormick in the earlier days, I found only two now alive—Ralph Emerson, of Rockford, and William N. Whiteley, of Springfield, Ohio. Both of these men to-day generously give the old warrior his due.
“McCormick was the first man to make the reaper a success in the field,” said Whiteley, the battle-worn giant of Ohio, where I found him still at work. “McCormick was a fighter—a bulldog, we called him; but those were rough days. The man who couldn’t fight was wiped out.”