THE FIRST McCORMICK REAPER
After a model of the original reaper
In 1834 the reaper was patented. It was shown at the World's Fair in London in 1851. It won a prize as the most valuable thing in the whole fair.
Cyrus H. McCormick started to manufacture his machine at Chicago in 1847. The demand for reapers grew rapidly. When the Civil War called out one man in three from the North, there were enough reapers in use to equal the labor of one million slaves. The North not only fed itself but sent great quantities of grain to England. Cyrus McCormick's great invention did much to help the North abolish slavery.
HARVESTING WITH MODERN MACHINERY
139. Reapers for the West. The invention of the reaper made it possible for the West to be quickly settled. Before, farmers raised only the few acres they could be sure of harvesting. Grain is lost, if not cut a few days after it is ripe. The wide prairies of the West could not be harvested by the old methods. Now on these great plains huge reapers drawn by engines sometimes cut forty-eight feet of grain in a single swathe.
Because of the labor it saves, McCormick's invention has made the cost of bread low for millions of people. With hand-reaping half the people of the country would be busy producing nothing but bread. In the past most nations were never free from the danger of starvation. Now the world produces enough for all.
A noted French society, when it elected McCormick a member, said that he had "done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man."