When Robert McCormick, the father of Cyrus, drew his crude reaper out to a field of wheat in the early harvest of 1831, to make a trial of the invention on which he had spent fifteen years, Cyrus, you may be sure, was more than an onlooker. He had doubtless had a considerable part in the making of this machine. So when it choked down and would not cut, he was probably even more disappointed than his father. But when the disappointed father said, "I am through with it; it is impossible to make a practical reaping machine," not so with Cyrus. The surrender of the father was the call of the son to battle. Then and there Cyrus resolved to make a successful reaper. The machine was pulled back to the blacksmith shop, and Cyrus took up the work where his father left off.

To improve the cutting part of the machine, Cyrus made a sickle bar, to carry a moving sickle, with wire guards extending forward into the grain. The sickle was made of a thin bar of steel, on the edge of which were filed sharp, saw-like teeth. A divider was attached to the outer end of the sickle bar, and extended forward, to separate the grain to be cut from the grain to be left standing. These two changes were probably the only ones made on his father's machine in the summer of 1831. Cyrus was anxious to give the new kind of cutter a trial. So before the last oats were cut, the improved machine was taken back to the field. The new cutter worked so well that Cyrus felt he was on the right track.

By the harvest of 1832, the improved machine probably looked very much like the machine patented in 1834. At all events, Cyrus felt ready to take his machine out into the "wide, wide world." A public exhibition was given near Lexington, which was attended by the farmers and laborers for miles around. The field in which the trial was to be made was very rough. The machine did not work well, and it looked for a time as if it also were a failure.

"Here," shouted the owner of the field, "stop your horses. That won't do, you are ruining my wheat."

This delighted the laborers, who feared that the machine would take work away from them.

"It's a humbug," shouted one.

"Give me the old cradle yet," cried another.

All this, you may be sure, was discouraging enough to the farmer-inventor. But farmers like fair play.

"I'll see that you have a fair chance, young man," said a farmer. "That field of wheat on the other side of the fence belongs to me. Pull down the fence and cross over."

Cyrus pulled down the fence and crossed over. The field was level, and before sundown he had laid low a full six acres of grain.

With this unheard-of feat accomplished, the machine was driven into Lexington and exhibited at the courthouse square. One spectator, after looking it over carefully, said, "This machine is worth a hundred thousand dollars."

Probably quite as agreeable to Cyrus were the words of his father: "It makes me feel proud, to have a son do what I could not do."

The general feeling of most of those who saw the machine on that day was, however, probably expressed by a certain lady, who said, "I thought it was a right smart curious sort of a thing, but that it wouldn't come to much."

McCormick advertised in the local newspaper, reapers for sale, as early as 1833. But it was seven years before he sold his first machine. To be sure, between 1833 and 1839 he was engaged with his father in running an iron furnace, and gave little time to his invention. The iron business, however, proved a failure, McCormick losing everything. The reaper was all he had left. He now turned to it to help him out of his financial troubles, exhibiting it in the harvest of 1839. Though he cut as much as twelve acres of grain in a day, no one wanted to buy. To the farmers of that time the machine was not only costly,—the price was fifty dollars,—but it was also very complex. "It can be run," said the farmers, "right well, by one who knows all its cogs and levers, but we are running farms and not circuses."

Most persons would have been discouraged, would have given up. McCormick was not that kind of man; he worked even harder than before. He succeeded in selling seven machines in 1842, twenty-nine in 1843, and fifty in 1844. This was big business.

Best of all, seven reapers were ordered from the West. These seven orders gave great joy to the McCormick brothers, who were now all busy at the old blacksmith shop, turning out a reaper a week. But when the question how to get reapers out to Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin arose, Cyrus saw that the old "home farm" was no place to make reapers, if these were to be sent to the West.

About this time a friend remarked, "Cyrus, why don't you go West with your reaper, where the fields are large and level, and where labor is scarce?"

McCormick decided that this was the best thing for him to do.

In a few days he was on his way. He traveled by stage through Pennsylvania, by boat along the lake ports, and on horseback over the Middle Western States. It was the first time he had seen the prairies, so broad and level and fertile. They seemed made for his reaper, and in Illinois he realized how greatly the West needed it. The bounteous harvest was too much to be cut with the cradle, and hogs and cattle had been turned into great fields of over-ripe grain.

"With my reaper," thought McCormick, "millions of bushels of grain can be saved, which are now left to rot on the ground. Here and there in Virginia, a farmer can be persuaded by hard work to buy a reaper, but the West,—the West must have the reaper."

Returning home, McCormick brought together all the improvements he had made in his machine since his first patent, and took out a new one in 1845.

He was going West, but where should he locate? St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinnati, and Cleveland were cities of good size, and each offered some special advantage. But McCormick studied the maps, saw where the railroads were going, and observed where the people were settling. He finally chose Chicago. This was one of the most fortunate decisions in his long and successful career.

When McCormick voted for Chicago, he had neither money nor credit. To start in business, he must find a man to furnish him with the needed money. McCormick called on William Ogden, at that time Mayor of Chicago, and told him of his invention, of his success, and of his new plans. On hearing McCormick's story, Ogden said, "You are just the man we want. I will give you twenty-five thousand dollars for a half interest in this reaper business of yours, and we will build a factory at once." The factory was built, and five hundred reapers were manufactured for the harvest of 1848, and fifteen hundred for the harvest of the next year. The making of reapers on a large scale in the West was thus a success from the first.

At the end of the second year, McCormick said to Ogden, "For your share of the business, I will pay you back the twenty-five thousand dollars you invested, and will give you twenty-five thousand besides for interest and profit."

Ogden, having many other interests, gladly accepted this offer; he had doubled his money in two years. McCormick now had a factory of his own, and the commanding position of being the inventor and successful maker of the reaper. He was well on the way to a great fortune. From this time on, he had no partners except his brothers, who joined him in Chicago, to help in the growing business.

The reaper did away with the hard work of cutting grain with the sickle or cradle. Farmers soon began to ask, "Why cannot a device be invented to do away with the even harder work of the raker?" In answer, a self-rake was invented in 1852, by Jearum Atkins, an invalid. Atkins had a McCormick reaper placed outside of his window. Day after day he sat in his chair and worked on an attachment which would of itself rake from the platform the cut grain. Success finally crowned his efforts, and McCormick, always anxious to meet the demands of the farmer, bought this invention.

The farmers nicknamed the contrivance the "Iron Man." It was surely a spectacle to see its long rake fingered arm whirling up through the air, and then, descending to the platform, rake off the cut grain in great bunches ready to be bound. The self-rake saved the labor of from one to two men, and after 1860 farmers scarcely bought any other kind of machine.