THE McCORMICK REAPER.
Later in the autumn came the thresher. That belonging to Farmer Miller was run by horse power. Two horses stood upon a platform, constantly stepping forward but not moving from their position. Instead the platform moved backward and this turned the machinery. The men placed the grain stalks in the hopper and the threshed grain came out of the machine, flowing into sacks, which when filled were tied by the men and set aside ready for the market.
The reaper and the thresher seemed to George the greatest of inventions. He obtained a book on inventions, and for many days he was buried in it. He read of the Englishman, Henry Ogle, whose reaper, made in 1822, aroused the anger of the working people, who threatened to kill the manufacturers if they continued to make the machines; of Patrick Bell's invention, which, though successful, was forgotten for twenty or thirty years; of Cyrus H. McCormick, the American, whose reaper first obtained a lasting success.
Most of all he was interested in the account of the first trial of reapers in England, at the time of the world's fair in 1851. What a joke it was for the London Times to poke fun at the McCormick machine, as it was exhibited in the Crystal Palace! How the great newspaper did wish that it had kept quiet when a few days later it was compelled to report the complete success of the ridiculed reaper!
The trial took place in Essex, about forty-five miles from London. Two hundred farmers were present, ready to laugh at failure or to accept any successful machine. The wheat was not ripe; the crop was heavy; and the day was rainy. The Hussey reaper was first tried but was soon clogged by the green, wet grain. The judges proposed to discontinue the trial, as the conditions were so unfavorable. But the agent of the McCormick reaper protested. His machine would work under any conditions; he wished that the gentlemen who had taken the pains to come to the trial should have a chance to see the McCormick. Accordingly it was brought forward and, in spite of everything, it went steadily forward, cutting all before it. Success was evident, and the English farmers gave three hearty cheers for the American reaping-machine.
Another trial, at which the reaper was timed, showed that it could cut twenty acres a day with ease. Even the laboring men realized that the machine would come at once into use; one, who was among the interested spectators, took the sickle, which he happened to have with him, and broke it in two across his knee; he said that he would no longer need that.
Four years later a trial took place in France also. Here three American, two English, and two French machines were tested. McCormick's reaper easily came out ahead, with the other American machines close behind. At the same time four threshing machines were tested. Six men with their flails, working as hard as they could, obtained fifty-four quarts of wheat in half an hour; the American thresher gave out six hundred and seventy-three quarts in the same time!
