Ralph Emerson, now one of the most venerable figures in Illinois, rose from a sick-bed against his doctors orders, so that he might be magnanimous to his former antagonist.
“McCormick’s first reapers were a failure,” said he, speaking slowly and with great difficulty; “and he owed his preëminence mainly to his great business ability. His enemies have said that he was not an inventor, but I say that he was an inventor of eminence.”
So, as the gray haze of years enables us to trace the larger outlines of his work, we can see that McCormick was especially fitted for a task which, up to his day, had never been done, and which will never need to be repeated during the lifetime of our earth. He was absolutely mastered by one idea, as wholly as Copernicus or Columbus. His business was his life. It was not accidental, as with Rockefeller, nor incidental, as with Carnegie. On one occasion when a friend was joking him about his poor judgment in outside affairs, he whirled around in his chair and said emphatically: “I have one purpose in life, and only one—the success and widespread use of my machines. All other matters are to me too insignificant to be considered.”
He made money—ten millions or more. But a hundred millions would not have bribed him to forsake his reaper. It was as much a part of him as his right hand. In several of his business letters he writes as though he had been a Hebrew prophet, charged with a world-message of salvation.
“But for the fact that Providence has seemed to assist me in all our business,” he writes on one critical occasion, “it has at times seemed that I would almost sink under the weight of responsibility hanging upon me. I believe the Lord will help us out.”
Not that he left any detail to Providence to which he could personally attend. He was a Puritan of the “trust-in-God-and-keep-your-powder-dry” species. A little farther down, in this same letter, he writes—“Meet Hussey in Maryland and put him down.”
The fountain-springs of his life were wholly within. He acted from a few basic, unchangeable convictions. If public opinion was with him, he was gratified; if it was against him he thought no more of it than of the rustling of the trees when the wind blew.
“When anyone opposed his plans and showed that they were impossible,” said one of his superintendents, “I noticed that he never argued; he just went on working.”
His brain had certain subjects distinctly mapped out. What he knew—he knew. He had no hazy imaginings. He lived in a black and white world and abhorred all half-tints. He was right—always right, and the men who opposed him were Philistines and false prophets, who deserved to be consumed by sudden fire from Heaven.
It was this inward spiritual force that made him irresistible. Small men shrivelled up when he spoke to them.