7 Cyrus McCormick 7States and England, had failed in his attempt to build a
successful reaping machine. In 1831 Cyrus, aged 22, tried
his hand at building a reaper. Resembling a two-wheeled,
horse-drawn chariot, the machine consisted of a vibrating
cutting blade, a reel to bring the grain within its reach, and
a platform to receive the falling grain. The reaper embodied
the principles essential to all subsequent grain-cutting
machines.
For farmers in the early 19th century, harvesting
required a large number of labourers, and, if they could be
found, the cost of hiring them was high. When McCormick’s
reaper was tested on a neighbour’s farm in 1831, it offered
the hope that the yield of the farmer’s fields would soon
not be limited to the amount of labour available. The
machine had defects, not the least of which was a clatter
so loud that slaves were required to walk alongside to calm
the frightened horses.
McCormick took out a patent in 1834, but his chief inter-
est at that time was the family’s iron foundry. When the
foundry failed in the wake of the Bank Panic of 1837, leaving
the family deeply in debt, McCormick turned to his still-
unexploited reaper and improved it. He sold two reapers
in 1841, seven in 1842, 29 in 1843, and 50 the following year.
An 1844 visit to the prairie states in the Midwest con-
vinced McCormick that the future of his reaper and of the
world’s wheat production lay in this vast fertile land rather
than in the rocky, hilly East. In 1847, with further patented
improvements, he opened a factory in the then small,
swampy, lakeside town of Chicago in partnership with the
mayor, William Ogden, who capitalized the venture with
$50,000 of his own money. The first year, 800 machines
were sold. More were sold the next year, and McCormick
was able to buy out Ogden.
McCormick’s main rival was Obed Hussey, whose
machine proved to be inferior as a reaper but superior as a