At this time McCormick was over seventy years of age, and crippled with rheumatism; but he believed that the Gordons had deceived him and he fought them sternly as long as he lived. After his death, his eldest son, Cyrus, consented to a compromise, whereby Osborne, who was owner of a share in the Gordon concern, and the Gordons were to be paid $225,000. But in order to impress upon them the enormity of this amount, he prepared the money for them in small bills. When they called at the McCormick office in Chicago, they were taken to a small room on the top floor and shown a great pyramid of green currency.
“There is your money,” said McCormick’s lawyer. “Kindly count it and see if it is not a quarter of a million dollars.”
The three men gasped with mingled ecstasy and consternation. “B—b—but,” stammered one of them, “how can we take it away? Can’t you give us a cheque?”
“That is the right amount, in legal money, gentlemen,” replied the lawyer. “All I will say is that there are a couple of old valises in the closet—and I wish you good afternoon.”
For several hours Osborne and the Gordons literally waded in affluence, counting the money and packing it in the valises. By the time they had finished, it was eight o’clock. The building was dark. The elevator was not running. They were hungry and terrified. Step by step they groped their trembling way downstairs, and staggered with their treasure through the perilous streets to the Grand Pacific Hotel. None of them ever forgot the terror of that night.
Another warlike Reaper King was “Bill” Whiteley, of Ohio. Whiteley had invented a combined mower and reaper in 1858, which he named the “Champion”; and he pushed this machine with an irresistible enthusiasm.
His mode of attack was not the patent suit, but the field test. This was the white-hot climax of the rivalry among the reaper kings; and it was great sport for the farmers. It was a reaper circus—a fierce chariot-race in a wheat-field; and its influence upon the industry was remarkable. It weeded out the low-grade machines. It spurred on the manufacturers to a campaign of improvement. It developed American harvesters to the highest point of perfection. It swung the farmers into the new path of scientific agriculture. And it piled expenses so high that few of the reaper kings escaped disaster.
A field test was conducted in this fashion: A committee of judges was appointed, and several acres of ripe grain were selected as the battle-field. After the field was marked off into equal sections, each reaper took its place. There were sometimes two reapers and sometimes forty. The signal was given. “Crack”—the horses leaped; the drivers shouted; and hundreds of farmers surged up and down in excited crowds.
| ASA S. BUSHNELL | BENJAMIN H. WARDER |
| HON. THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE | DAVID M. OSBORNE |
“All’s fair in a field test,” said the reaper agents who superintended these contests; though each man said it to himself. They were a hardy and reckless body of men, half cowboy, half mechanic, and no trick was too dangerous or too desperate for them. Often the feud was so bitter that bodyguards of big-fisted “bulldozers” were on the spot to protect the warrior of their tribe who was in danger. “I had four men with me once who together weighed 1,000 pounds,” said A. E. Mayer, who is now the general of an army of 40,000 salesmen. In most tests the machines were shamefully abused. Self-binders were made to cut and bind stubble as though it were grain. Mowers were driven full tilt against stumps and hop-poles. Rival reapers were chained back to back and yanked apart by plunging horses. The warrior agents exposed the weak points in each other’s machines. They photographed each other’s breakdowns, and bragged to the limit of their vocabularies. They raised prices in one town and cut them in the next; for when their fighting blood was aroused—and that was often—they cared no more for profits than a small boy cares for his clothes.