Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work
CHAPTER XIII
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
We have now seen the machinery by which the wheat is cut, moved, stored, financed, and marketed. Its next and last step, as wheat, is to the Flour-mill, whence it goes to the bakeries, the groceries, and the homes of six hundred million people. Here, too, there have had to come new methods since the advent of the Reaper.
In the Dark Ages of the sickle and the flail, two flat stones did well enough for a flour-mill. Even the bread that was found in the ruins of Pompeii had been made of wheat that was merely crushed. Later came the mill run by horse-power or by the energy of a little stream. Such were the first American mills. The mill that was operated by George Washington at Mount Vernon, for instance, was run by water-power and produced flour that sold for thirteen dollars a barrel. Rochester, N. Y., was the first American "Flour City"; but the modern flour-mill did not come until it was compelled to come by the deluge of Reaper wheat that flooded the markets in 1870.
As usually happens in the case of inventions, it came where it was not expected. It made its arrival in the Hungarian city of Budapest in 1874. The "new process," as it was called, was based upon the use of steel rolls instead of stones. It was as superior to the old-fashioned way as the Reaper had been to the sickle or as the thresher was to the flail. It was amazingly quick and produced a better flour. By reason of these new mills, Budapest became at a bound the foremost "Flour City" of the world, and held its place against all comers until 1890.
Then the prestige passed to Minneapolis--a young city on the head-waters of the Mississippi, the recent home of the prairie-dog and the buffalo. Shortly before the Civil War, a youthful lawyer named William D. Washburn drifted westwards from Maine until he came to Minneapolis, at that time a tiny village on the frontier. He found no clients here, and no law; but he did find a ledge of limestone rock jutting across the Mississippi and making the only large water-fall in all that region. So he threw aside his legal education and became the organizer of a water-power company and the owner of a little flour-mill. Soon the long line of Reapers reached Minneapolis and swept on westwards into the richest wheat lands that had ever been known. The wheat overwhelmed the slow old-fashioned mills, so the ex-lawyer in 1878 adopted the Budapest system and built a roller-mill that was the quickest and most automatic of its kind. Other millers had by this time come to Minneapolis--Pillsbury, Crosby, Christian, and Dunwoody; and all together they pushed the flour business until in twelve years they had become the main millers of the world.
To-day the river of wheat is deepest at Minneapolis. Its twenty-two great mills roll 120,000,000 bushels into flour as an ordinary year's work. While the swiftest mill in Athens, in the age of Pericles, produced no more than two barrels a day, there is one mill of incredible size in Minneapolis that fills _seventeen thousand_ barrels in a twenty-four hours' run--enough to give bread to New York State and California. What the Greeks did in a day the Minnesotans do in ten seconds. Five million barrels of this Minneapolis flour is each year scattered among foreign nations, a fact which informs us that flour is now not a local product, but part of the real currency of nations. No doubt the people who dwell by the Sea of Galilee, whose fathers were once miraculously fed upon seven loaves of bread and a few fishes, are now being fed miraculously upon loaves of bread made from the flour of Minneapolis.
The making of the bread--that is the final step in this movement of the wheat. As yet, this is a local process, though not wholly so. Certain ready-to-eat foods are now being made from wheat and boxed in such a way that they may be sent from one country to another. If we trace back the original of a loaf of bread of ordinary size, we shall find that it was made from two-thirds of a pound of flour, which was rolled from one pound of wheat, containing about twelve thousand grains that were grown on forty-eight square feet of land and reaped by a self-binder in two seconds. When the wheat was cut in the old-fashioned way, with a hand-sickle, every loaf of bread required eighty seconds' labor instead of two.
In a public test made last year in the State of Washington, wheat was cut, threshed, ground into flour, and baked into biscuits in twenty-three minutes. This is an evidence that all the machinery for handling grain has now been brought up to the same high level of speed and efficiency as the self-binder. It also helps us to understand the daily marvel of cheap bread--the fact that a hundred loaves of bread are now delivered one by one at an American workingman's door for the cost of a seat at the opera or a couple of song-records by Caruso.
So plentiful is this bread that the loaves baked from American flour in 1907 would have made a wall of bread around the earth, or have given thirty loaves apiece to every human creature; and so cheap has it become in these latter days that even in the United States it is not more than three cents a day per capita. The unskilled laborer who receives $1.50 a day, earns his bread in the first ten minutes, every work day morning. And the total tax he pays to the men who make the self-binders is not more than one tenth of a cent per loaf.
Three-sevenths of the people of the world are now on a wheat basis. They are the lesser fraction in point of numbers, but the larger in point of prosperity and progress. A wheat map of the globe would be very nearly a map of modern civilization. As yet, there are many peasants who grow wheat and cannot afford to eat it. But the number of bread-eaters is steadily increasing, probably at the rate of four or five million a year.
The nation that eats most bread per capita is Belgium. After her come France, England, and the United States. As the Belgians, with their scanty acres, cannot grow more wheat than would support them for nine weeks, they are compelled to import nearly fifty million bushels a year; and it is this continual influx of grain that has done most to make Antwerp the third busiest port in the world and the home of forty steamship lines.
France is second as an eater, and third as a grower, of wheat. But it is not an important factor in the international market, as there is usually almost an even balance between what it grows and what it eats. It has very little either to buy or to sell. Its crops are steady and large, and by intensive cultivation the thrifty French are obtaining the same amount of grain from less and less land.
There are two countries only, Great Britain and Holland, that impose no tariff upon either wheat or flour. Neither the British nor the Dutch will tolerate a bread tax. Both countries have barely enough land to grow one-quarter as much wheat as they need, although there was a period in the early history of England when it was nicknamed "the Granary of the North," because of its many wheat-fields. To-day the bread on three British tables out of four is made of wheat brought in a British ship from some foreign country; and the total amount of wheat consumed in the United Kingdom is so great that it requires an army of 93,000 men with self-binders to cut it and tie it into sheaves. If it had to be reaped with sickles, it would be a ten-day harvesting for half the able-bodied men in the two islands.
Germany eats less wheat than Great Britain, and raises more than twice as much. The Germans are skilled wheat-farmers. They grow as much on half an acre of poor soil as Americans grow on a whole acre of good soil. The Italians eat very nearly as much as the Germans, and raise a larger crop by dint of great labor on the tiny farms and terraced hillsides of Italy. Both countries tax the bread of the poor by a tariff of thirty-eight to forty-eight cents a bushel on foreign wheat. The Austrians and Hungarians, in spite of a climate of extremes and sudden changes, manage to supply themselves with more than ten billion loaves of bread by the tillage of their own fields, and usually have some flour to sell to the neighboring countries. The Spanish cannot quite feed themselves; in addition to the wheat they grow, they are obliged to buy about a hundred ship-loads a year. Denmark comes out even. Portugal buys her bread for four months of the year. Greece, Norway, and Sweden raise half enough wheat. The Swiss can get no more from their valley-farms than will feed them for ten weeks. And the peasants of Russia and Roumania, who raise wheat in abundance, have unfortunately not yet risen to that luxurious level of life in which white bread is the every-day food of the people. Although Russia has more wheat to sell than any other nation, a Russian eats one-third as much wheat as a Belgian, and there is a famine somewhere in the vast Russian Empire almost every winter.
Africa is not yet a wheat-eating continent. Egypt, which was, in the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, the wheat-centre of the world, now grows less grain than Oregon; Algeria raises less than Ohio; and Tunis, from the fields that surround the ruins of ancient Carthage, produces less grain than Tennessee. India is slowly shifting from rice to wheat. Many of the fields that once grew indigo are now yellow with grain. At present India is the most uncertain factor in the situation, as it may have eighty million bushels to sell or none. As it is one-third as large as the United States, and crowded with three times the population, there is always need of its grain at home. As yet, the Reaper has not been allowed to extend its benefits to India. Most of the grain is reaped in the old slow, wasteful way. It is sown by hand, cut by sickles, stored in pits, and transported on the backs of camels. Little Japan is falling into line as a bread-eating country, growing now as much wheat as California. And even China, which is not as a whole on the wheat-map of the world, has recently begun to grow wheat in Manchuria and to build flour-mills at Hong-Kong.
So, the human race will soon be able to feed itself. It has learned how and needs only to use to the full the agencies that are already invented and established. Beginning with the McCormick Reaper in 1831, there has been constructed a world mechanism of the bread, which promises to wholly abolish Famine and its brood of evils. The crude machine that was hammered and whittled into shape in a log workshop on a Virginian farm, has now become a System--a _McCormick System_, that cuts ten million bushels of ripe wheat a day and transports it hither and thither as handily as though the whole round earth were girt with belt-conveyors.
That young Virginian farmer who awoke from his dream and made his dream come true, made it possible for a few in each country to provide enough food for all. He found a cure for Hunger, which had always persisted like a chronic disease. He heaped the plates on the tables of thirty-six nations. He took a drudgery and transformed it into a profession. He instructed the wheat-eating races how to increase the "seven small loaves" so that the multitudes should be fed. He picked up the task of feeding the hungry masses--the Christly task that had lain unfulfilled for eighteen centuries, and led the way in organizing it into a system of international reciprocity.
To-day there is no longer in most countries any tragic note in the Epic of the Wheat. There is no sweating peasant with a hoe. The plowman may even sit, if he wishes, upon the sliding steel knife that slices the soil into furrows, or upon the steel harrow that combs the clods into soft, loose earth. The sower is no heavy-footed serf, scattering his grain in handfuls upon the surface of the soil, where the birds of the air may devour it. He, too, rides upon a machine with steel fingers that plant the living seed securely in the living earth. And when, at the call of the sun and the rain, the black field becomes green and ripens from green to gold, its yellow fruitage is swept down and into barns, not by a horde of stooping laborers, but by the Grand March of the Harvesters, the drivers of painted chariots, who ride against the grain and leave it behind them in bound sheaves.
Henceforth civilization may be based upon higher motives than the Search for Food. The struggle for existence may become the struggle of the nobler nature for its full development. The gentle need not be eliminated by the strong. Instead of contending with one another in an unbrotherly competition, men may move upward to the higher activities of social self-preservation and organized self-help. By mastering the problem of the bread, they have opened up such opportunities for education, for travel, for happier homes, for the prosperity and friendship of the nations, as no previous generation has ever had. And it is here, it is in this larger and kindlier civilization, that is now made possible by the Reaper and the wheat-mechanism which has grown up around it, that we shall find the full spiritual value to the world of that stout-hearted bread-winner of the human race whose life began among the hills of Old Virginia one hundred years ago.
THE END
INDEX
A
Adams, John, 15
Adriance, John P., 103, 119
Advertisements of Reaper, 54, 81-83, 112, 134
Africa not a wheat-eating country, 242
Agencies established for sale of Reapers (about 1844), 63
Agents, Cyrus H. McCormick's plan in regard to, 83, 84, 86
Agriculture, Department of, 87
Albert, Prince, 125, 132
Algeria, 242
Allen, Grant, 205
_America_, yacht, 131
Amsterdam, 222
Antwerp, no grain stored in, 217; Bourse in, 222; third busiest port in world, 239
Appleby, John F., 115
Argentina, 209, 212, 225, 228
Arkwright, inventor, 53, 131
Armagh massacre of 1641, 22
Athens, mills at, 236
Atkins, Jearum, 106
Augusta County, Virginia, 3
Australia, wheat crop of, 209; legislation against speculation in, 225; development of, 228
Australian stripper, 200
Austria in 1809, 4; farm laborers received no wages in, 123; climate and wheat production in, 241
Austrian Emperor decorated Cyrus H. McCormick, 135
Ayrshire, Scotland, 86
B
Babylon, 206
Baggage Case, 1862-1885, 100-102; _see also_ Pennsylvania Railroad
Baltic Exchange, London, 221
_Baltic_, holder of ocean record, 131
Baltimore and Ohio Railway, 49
Baltimore Convention of 1861, 158, 166
Bankers concerned in moving of wheat, 223, 224
Barbary pirates, 4
Barclay, Col. A. T., 40
Barge, invention of, 210
Battleship turret, improver of, 95
Bavarians in the Tyrol (1809), 4
_Beagle_, H. M. S., Darwin's voyage in, 51
Bear, Henry, 66
Behel, Jacob, 115
Belgian method of reaping, 6
Belgians, King of the, 125
Belgium, legislation against speculation in, 225; consumption of bread per capita in, 239, 242
Berlin, 214, 217
Berthelot, 51
Bessemer converter, 17, 49, 69, 210
Bismarck, 136
Black Death in England, 124
Blackie, 1
Blame, Mrs. Emmons, 183
Blanchard, inventor, 95
Blue Ridge Mountains, 2, 36
Board of Trade, none in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70
Bonanza farms, 194
Bull, Ole, 184
Bonar, 1
Bonner, Henry, publisher, 21
Bottgher, 53
Bourses, or European Exchanges, 222
Bowyer, Col. John, 40
Braila, Roumania, 216
Bradshaw, Prof., 40
Brains, John, 59
Bread, making of, 237, 238; record time from standing grain to, 238; cheapness of, 238
Bread tax, 240, 241
Brokers, wheat, 219, 222, 224
Brooks, Absalom, 58
Brown, A. C., 66
Brown, Senator, of Miss., 93
Bryant, 76
Buckle, 204
Budapest, Bourse in, 222; "new process" mills in, 235, 236
Buenos Ayres, 218, 222, 229
Buffalo, N. Y., 69, 216
Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton, 130
Burson, W. W., 115
Bushnell, Reaper manufacturer, 103, 120
Butler, E. K., 143, 148
Butler, Gen., 36
C
Cablegrams, 233
Calhoun, 164, 178
California, 51, 82, 190, 243
Calvin, John, 156, 157, 168
Canada, grain inspectors in, 222; grain speculation in, 225
Canada (western), wheat crop of, 209; railways of, 212, 213; development of, 227, 229
Canadian Pacific Railway, 227
Canal, first, in Chicago, 75
Carlyle, 155
Carnegie, Andrew, 56
Carpenter, "Pump," 114, 115, 117
Carson, Miss Polly, 40, 41
Carthage, ruins of, 242
Cash, John, 35
Cavaliers of Virginia, 20
Châlons, Emperor Napoleon's estate, 134
Chautauqua idea, originator of, 120
Chicago, 4, 30, 31, 37, 50, 67, 68, 70-78, 83, 85, 97, 106, 137, 144, 146, 151-153, 162, 166, 188, 189, 192, 196, 201, 214, 215, 218, 219, 222, 223
Chicago fire of 1871, 30, 151-153, 182
China, opium traffic of, 204; future use of wheat in, 232, 243
Chopin, 1, 51
Christian, Minneapolis miller, 236
Cincinnati Democratic Convention, 171
Circus, first, in Chicago, 71
City and town dwellers, proportion of, 195, 196
Civil War, _see_ Secession, War of
Clay, Henry, 15, 164
_Clermont_, Fulton's steamboat, 7
Cleveland, Ohio, 73
Collins Line, 131
Colt's pistol, 130, 131
Columbus, Reaper traced back to, 17
Congress, first recognition of Chicago by, 72; Lincoln elected to, 72; patent suits carried to, 91, 92; how inventors have been treated by, 95
Cooper, Peter, 11, 155
Corn stored at Chicago, 215
Corn Trade Association, London, 221
_Corn Trade News_, of Liverpool, 221
Corners in wheat, 226
Cort, 53
Cotton-gin, 52, 97, 191
Covenanters, Scotch, 19, 23, 157
Cradle, 5, 27, 45
Crichton-Browne, Sir James, 204
Crimean War, 190
Criminals in period of 1809, 8
Cromwell, 173, 185
Crosby, Minneapolis miller, 236
Cross of the Legion of Honor given Cyrus H. McCormick by Emperor Napoleon III., 135
Crystal Palace, London, 127
D
Dalrymple, Oliver, 193, 194
Darwin, 1, 51
Davis, H. Winter, 99
Davy, 131
Debates between Lincoln and Douglas, 100
Deere, John, 49, 131
Deering, William, 115, 116, 118, 121, 150
De Lesseps, 70
Denmark, 241
Department store, free trial given by, 80
Des Moines, Iowa, 6, 86
Dickerson, E. N., 91, 98
Diet of Worms, 156
Diseases prevalent in 1809, 7
Divider, origin of, 32, 46
Douglas, Stephen A., 91, 99, 100
Driving-wheel of Reaper, 34
Drunkenness in 1809, 7
Duluth-Superior, 215
Dunfermline, Scotland, Andrew Carnegie's birthplace, 56
Dunwoody, Minneapolis miller, 236
Duties imposed on American machines entering Europe, 136
E
Eager, Samuel, 58
Easter, J. D., 230
Eastern States, labor and money in (about 1839), 58
Ebrington, Lord, 127, 128
Edward, King, 132
Egypt once wheat-centre of world and present production in, 242
Egyptian tombs, wheat found in, 206
"1800-and-starve-to-death" period, 51
Elastic currency, demands for, 223
Electric engine, builder of, 95
Electrical experiments, 50
Elevators, grain, 214-217
Embargo (1809), 8-10
Emerson, Ralph, 45, 46, 98, 103, 119
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 97
England, riots in (1809), 3, 4; U. S. flag flouted by, 4; at war with Scotland, 18, 19; with Ireland, 19; Scotch-Irish ready for war with, 20; conditions in (1831), 50; price of labor in, 123; labor conditions and farm machinery in, 124; Corn Exchange in, 218; speculation in, 224; consumption of bread in, 239; no tariff on wheat or flour in, 240; has lost place as "granary of the North," 240; contrasted with Germany, 241
Erie Canal, 210, 212
Ether, use of, 69
Euphrates, valley of, 228
Europe, introduction of Reaper into, and trade with, 123-138; cost of growing wheat in, 209; American wheat exported to, 210; wheat stored in, 217
Exchanges, grain, 218-222
F
Factories in 1831, 48, 49
Factory, rebuilding of, after fire, 31, 152, 182; present size of, 47, 196-200; in Virginia, poor transportation from, 64; McCormick's plan to build his own, 67; Chicago chosen as site of, 77, 137, 202; largest in Chicago, 77; in 1860, 106; output of, 137; at time of Chicago fire, 151; in 1884, 188
Famine of 1846 in Ireland, 71
Famines, local, 51; in Russia, 242
Farm laborers drawn by 1849 gold rush, 82, 83, 190
Farm machinery, none in 1809, 5, 11; invention of, 17; profession of making, 22; none in 1831, 49; farmers not using (about 1839), 57, 58; fixed prices for, 81; field test as method of marketing, 87; McCormick's system of selling, 89; introduction of, in England, 124; sale of, boomed after 1849, 190; present era of, 193-195
Farmers, increase of (1810-1820), 11, 21; their opinions of early types of mowers and reapers, 43; McCormick's confidence in, 80; advertising among, and testimonials from, 82; McCormick stood well with, 85; his business methods with, 85; McCormick hurt by petitions of protest from, 94; credit extended to, 193; farm machinery used by, 193-195
"Farmer's Register," 43
Fassler, Jerome, 119
Federal bankrupt law of 1842, 71
Field, Cyrus W., 155
Field tests, 87-89, 134, 135
Fingers on cutting blade, origin of, 33
Fire department, Chicago, 1846, 72
Fiske, John, 21
Fitch & Co., 66
FitzGerald, 1
Fixed price, Reapers sold at, 80, 81
Flesh food, 205
"Flour Cities," 234, 235
Flour, manufacture of, 234-237
Flour-mills, 234-237
Food, first necessity, 203, 204; relation between population and, 204; three principal articles of, 205
Foreign trade in Reapers, 123, 124, 131-138
Fowler, Miss Nettie, _see_ McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus H.
France, U. S. flag flouted by, 4; price of labor in, 123; no central wheat market in, 222; speculation in, 225; consumption of bread in, 239, 240; wheat grown in, 240; intensive cultivation in, 240
Frederick of Holstein, Prince, 128
Frederick, Virginia, 3
Fredericksruhe, Bismarck's estate, 136
Free library, none in 1831, 50
Free trial of Reaper, 80
French Academy of Science elected Cyrus H. McCormick a member, 136
French Revolution, 156, 204
Froude, 21
Fulton, Robert, 7, 11, 21, 53, 95
Fulton's steamboat, 7
G
Galatz, 216
Galena, Ill., 76
Galilee, Sea of, people who dwell by the, 237
Gammon, E. H., 116
Garrison, William Lloyd, 51
Gas not used in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70
Genoa, 218
Gerland, Dr., 206
Germany in 1809, 4; price of labor in, 123; reasons why Reapers are not made in, 136; grain inspectors in, 222; legislation against speculation in, 225; compared with Red River Valley, 231; compared with Great Britain, 240; intensive cultivation in, 241
Gilkerson, David, 58
Gladstone, 2, 51
Glanders, a contagious disease, 5
Glessner, Reaper manufacturer, 103, 120
Gold put in circulation by wheat, 228, 229
Gold rush to California, 1849, 82, 190
Goodyear, 53, 95
Gorham, Marquis L., 115, 117
Grain-car, invention and use of, 211, 212
Granville, Lord, 131
Gray & Warner, 66
Great Britain, _see_ England
Greece, 225, 241
Greeley, Horace, 72, 129, 155, 167
Gutenberg, 53
H
Hague, The, Conferences, 233
Hall, Dr. John, 169
Hall, Patrick, 22, 23
Hamburg, 222
Hancock, candidate for President, 171
Hand-labor, Reaper invented in era of, 48, 49
"Hard Times" measures in Legislature, 71
Harding, George, 91, 99
Hargreaves, inventor of weaving machinery, 53
Harper, Henry, publisher, 21
Hart, Eli, & Co., 52
Harvest season only opportunity of testing Reaper, 61, 92
Haussemann, Baron, 1
Hayes, President, 165
Hayes-Tilden controversy, 165
Heathcoat, inventor of weaving machinery, 53
Henry, Joseph, 21, 50
Herald Square, New York, 6
Hewitt, Abram S., 155
Hite, James M., 63
Hitt, Dr. N. M., 37
Hobbs lock, 131
Hoe press, 49, 69, 131
Holland in 1809, 4; legislation against speculation in, 225; no tariff on wheat or flour in, 240
Holloway, D. P., 96
Holmes, 1, 51
Holmes, H. A., 115
Homestead Act of 1862, 193
Hong-Kong, flour-mills at, 243
Houghawout, John W., 40
Houghton, Lord, 1
Howe, 69, 95, 131
Hudson Bay, 213
Hulled corn, use of, 69
Hungary, speculation in, 224; climate and wheat production of, 241
Hunger, evils due to, 204, 205
Huntley, Byron E., 103, 119
Hussey, Obed, 87, 88, 119
Huxley, 51
Hyatt, inventor, 95
I
Illinois, 64, 65, 69, 100, 151, 193
Immigrants supplied with Reapers on credit, 85, 86
India, opium traffic of, 204; cost of wheat production and labor in, 209, 242; railways of, 212; area and population of, 242, 243; wasteful methods practised in, 243
Indian Confederacy of Tecumseh, 4
Indian Massacre (1764) in Rockbridge County, Virginia, 2
Indiana wheat crop, 217
Indigo displaced by wheat in India, 242
Inspectors of grain, 222, 224
Insurance agents for wheat, 222-224
Intensive cultivation, 240, 241
_Interior, The_, 162, 163, 172
International Harvester Company, 183, 201
Inventors not encouraged, 6; how treated by Congress and the Patent Office, 95; rights of, as stated by Webster, 95
Iowa, 50, 63, 69, 230
Ireland, Scotch Covenanters in, 19, 21; famine of 1846 in, 71
Irish immigrants in Chicago, 71
Iron furnace operated by Cyrus H. McCormick, 55-57
"Iron Man," Atkins's self-rake Reaper, 106, 107
Iron, price of, about 1833, 55, 56
Italy, no central wheat market in, 222; wheat consumption and production in, 241
J
Jacquard, inventor of weaving machinery, 53
Jails, conditions in, 8, 9
Jamestown colony, 36
Janesville, Wis., 114
Japan, object of, in war with Russia, 204; more wheat consumed and raised in, 243
Jefferson, President, 8, 10, 11, 15, 16
Jenks, Joseph, of Lynn, 5
Johnson, Reverdy, 91, 98
Johnson, Senator, of Maryland, 96
Jones, William H., 104, 120
K
Kansas, 51, 85, 204, 230, 231
Kansas City, 216
Kay, inventor of weaving machinery, 53
Kelly, inventor, 95
Kentucky, Scotch-Irish in, 20
Kinglake, 1
Kinzie, John, 77
Knox, John, 18, 58, 156, 157, 169
Koh-i-noor diamond, 125, 126
Krapotkin, Prince, 204
Kurtz, Jacob, 58
L
Land sales from 1810 to 1820, 11
Law-school, first in, Chicago, 71
Lexington Female Academy, 40
_Lexington Union_, 54
Lexington, Virginia, 37, 39, 40
Licenses to manufacturers of McCormick's Reaper, 66, 98, 112, 116, 120
Lilley, General, 140
Lincoln, Abraham, 1, 2, 51, 72, 91, 99, 100, 191
Lind, Jenny, 184
Liverpool, 221, 222, 225
Livingstone, 70
Locke, Sylvanus D., 112, 115
Locomotives, early, 49, 50, 192, 210
London Exhibition of 1851, 124-127, 130, 131, 190
London, no grain elevators in, 217; wheat consumption of, 217; Baltic Exchange in, 221, 222; methods of wheat marketing in, 225
"Low-down" binder, 118
Luther, Martin, 156, 157, 173
M
Mackenzie, expert Reaper operator, 128
Mail-order houses, free trial given by, 80
Manchuria, wheat raised in, 243
Manitoba, Province of, 225
Mann, inventor, 108
Manny and Emerson, of Rockford, Ill., 98, 103, 119
Manufacturers licensed to build McCormick's Reapers, _see under_ Licenses
Marsh, C. W., 45, 46
"Marsh Harvester," 109, 110
Martineau, Miss, 76
Mary, Queen of Scots, 18
Masses benefited by wheat trade, 229
Massie, William, 60
Mazzini, 51
McChesney, Adam, 28
McClung, Billy, 159
McClurg, Alexander C., publisher, 21
McCormick, Miss Anita, _see_ Blame, Mrs. Emmons
McCormick Centenary, 45
McCormick City, 196-202
McCormick Company, present, 98
McCormick, Cyrus Hall, 2, 3, 11-13, 16-18, 21, 22, 25-28, 30-35, 37-48, 51-68, 71-85, 87-105, 109-113, 115-119, 121-124, 129-191, 193, 195, 198-202, 208, 230, 244, 246
McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus H., 182, 183
McCormick, Cyrus H., Jr., 163, 183, 184, 201
McCormick, Davis, 29
McCormick family, 13, 17, 22-25, 64, 66, 78
McCormick, Harold, 183
McCormick home in Rockbridge County, Virginia, 2, 3, 13-16, 25, 35-37, 40, 48, 62
McCormick, Leander, 37, 123, 140, 143, 181, 182
"McCormick Plan," 167
McCormick, Robert, 13-17, 22, 25, 28-31, 40, 45, 104, 181
McCormick, Mrs. Robert, 23-25, 181
McCormick, Robert, son of Cyrus H. McCormick, 183
McCormick, Stanley, 183, 200
McCormick System, 243
McCormick Theological Seminary, 162, 163
McCormick, Thomas, 22
McCormick, Miss Virginia, 183
McCormick, William, 37, 123, 143, 181, 182
McDowell, Col. James, 40
Mechi, John J., 127-129, 131
Mecklenburg, Virginia, 20
Melville, Andrew, 169
Mendelssohn, 1, 51
Mexican War, Chicago organized regiment for, 71
Michigan white ash used in manufacture of Reapers, 74
Miller, Lewis, 104, 120
Milwaukee, 73
Minneapolis, 215, 235-237
Minnesota, 51, 193, 217
Mississippi River, 50
Missouri, 63
Moore, James, 40
Morgan, Junius, 131, 155
Mormons, 69
Morse, 21, 95, 131
Morton, Dr., 69
Mount Vernon flour-mill, 234
Mower, Miller's, 120
N
Napoleon, 4, 10
Napoleon III., Emperor, 134, 135
Nebraska, 51
New Albany, Ind., Seminary, 162
New England, 230
"New process" flour-mills, 235
New York City, 4, 6, 8, 9, 37, 52, 119, 160, 216
Newspapers in 1831, 50
Newton, John, 59
Niagara Falls, power from, 216
North Dakota, 85, 232
Northwestern Theological Seminary, 162
Norway, speculation in grain in, 225; wheat production in, 241, 242
Novorossisk, Russia, grain elevator at, 216, 217
O
Oats stored at Chicago, 215
Odessa, 217
Ogden, William B., 75-78
Ohio, 64, 67, 242
Oklahoma, 69
Oliver, James, 49
Opium traffic, 204
Oregon, 242
Oriental method of chaffering and bargaining, vogue of, 81
Osborne, David M., 103, 120
P
Pacific coast, no grain elevators on, 216
Page, Prof., 95
Palissy, 53
Papers in 1831, 48
"Parcimony in Nutrition," 204
Paris Exposition (1855), 133
Paris, no grain stored in, 217; Bourse in, 222
Parker, J., 63
Pasteur, 51
Patent, Cyrus H. McCormick's first, on Reaper, 59; expiration of original, 91; suits over extension of, 91-98
Patent Law, 91
Patent Office, 91-93, 95, 185
Patents for Reaper and mower inventions, 34, 41; suits over, 45, 90-98; for self-binders, 118
Patton, Dr. Francis L., 172
Paupers in period of 1809, 8
Paved streets, none in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70
Peabody, George, 131, 155
Peavey, F. H., 214
Pennsylvania Railroad, 158; _see also_ Baggage Case
Pericles, mills in time of, 236
Peterborough, N. H., 50
Photography, 49
Pillsbury, Minneapolis miller, 236
Pittsburg, Pa., 74
Platform on Reaper, origin of, 33
Plow, hillside, 45, 81
Plow, iron, thought to poison soil, 5; invention of, 49
Plow, self-sharpening, 45
Poe, 1, 51
Police force of Chicago in 1847, 70
Polish female laborers, 197
Pompeii, bread found in ruins of, 234
Poorhouses used as storehouses for wheat, 230
Portugal, 241
Post-office, Chicago, in 1847, 70
Postage in 1831, 50
Postage stamps, 70
Postal Union, 233
"Prairie Ground," American display at London Exhibition of 1851, 126
Prairies, need of Reapers to harvest on the, 65, 73; uncultivated before advent of Reaper, 67
Prairie States, ten, 230
Presbyterian Church, 158, 185, 186
Princeton University, 172
Protestant Reformation, 156, 185
Proudhon, 1, 51
Publicity, Cyrus H. McCormick believed in policy of, 81
Puddling-furnace, 17
Pyramids, wheat pictured on, 206
R
Railway from Chicago to Galena, 76
Railways in 1831, 49; extending westward, 67; none reaching Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70; Chicago becomes a centre for, 73; preceded by Reaper in West, 192; distribution of food-stuffs by, 210, 211; building of trans-continental, 211; across Siberia, 212; in western Canada, Argentina, and India, 212; as wheat-conveyors, 212; converging at Chicago, 214; in Prairie States, 230
Ready-to-eat foods, 237
Reaper, McCormick, 13, 17, 28-48, 52-67, 73-76, 78-86, 88, 89, 92, 95-98, 100, 103-108, 110-113, 115, 117, 119-124, 126-135, 137, 138, 147, 166, 169, 170, 188-193, 195, 196, 200-203, 208, 210, 212, 214, 226, 227, 230, 243-246
Reapers of all makes, total annual production of, 209
Reciprocating blade, origin of, 32
Red River Valley, 194, 231, 232
Reed, Col. Samuel, 40
Reel, origin of, 33, 46
Republican party, 100
Revolutionary War, 3, 20
Rice, 205, 212, 242
Riots in 1837, 52
"River and Harbor Convention," Chicago, 71, 72
Rochester, N. Y., 234
Rockbridge County, Virginia, McCormick farm in, 2
Rotterdam, wheat stored in, 217
Roumania, 242
Roumanian cities use concrete grain elevators, 216
Rubber manufacture, inventor of, 53
Ruff, John, 38, 40
Russia, farm laborers received no wages in, 123; in war with Japan, 204; development of, 228; wheat production, consumption, and exportation in, 242; famines in, 242
Russian army in Sweden (1809), 4
Russo-Japanese War, 204
S
Sailors become farmers, 11
St. Louis, Mo., 73, 216
Sales system of Cyrus H. McCormick, 47, 78 _et seq._
Saratoga, N. Y., 7
Sault Ste. Marie Canal, 210
Sauvage, inventor of screw propeller, 53
School attended by Cyrus H. McCormick, 26
Scotch-Irish, the, 17-23, 25, 29
Scotland, 18, 74
Screw propeller, inventor of, 53
Scribner, Charles, publisher, 21
Scythe, invention of, 5
Secession, War of, 100, 166-168, 191, 192
Self-binders, 110-115, 117, 118, 121, 208-210, 238
Self-rake Reapers, 106, 107, 110, 114
Self-sizing device, Gorham's invention of, 117
Seneca, quoted, 154
Serfs, 15, 124
Servia, conditions in (1809), 4
Sèvres porcelain, 53
Seward, William H., 91, 98, 155
Sewerage, none in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70
Sewing-machine, 17, 49, 69, 131, 210
Seymour, Morgan & Co., 66, 116, 119, 120
Sheffield steel used in manufacture of Reapers, 74
Sherwood farm, near Elgin, Ill., 111
Shipping, Chicago becomes centre for, 73, 215
Siberia, Russia seeking seaport for, 204; wheat crop of, 209, 217; railway across, 212; development of, 228; might take lesson from Red River Valley, 231
Sickle, its use in 1809, 5
Side-draught construction of Reaper, 33, 34
Side-delivery machine, first practical, 46
Skulls, pyramid of, 4
Slaves, work of, 191
Smith, Abraham, 60, 62
Smith, Joshua, 57
Smith, Sidney, 130
Social conditions in 1809, 7-9
Solomon, 206
South Carolina, 97
Spain, in 1809, 4; wheat imported by, 241
Spaulding, George H., 115
Speculators, grain, 224, 225
Spencer, Herbert, 51
Spring, Charles, 143
Stanton, Edwin M., 91, 99
Staunton, Virginia, 2, 40, 57, 58, 60
Steamboat, invention of, 210
Steele, Eliza, 37
Steele, John, 37, 40
Steele's Tavern, Virginia, 37
Stewart, A. T., 21, 81
Stock-yards not located at Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70
Storage of wheat, 213, 214
Suez Canal, 70, 210
Sulina, 217, 218
Surveying, Cyrus H. McCormick's study of, 27
Sweden in 1809, 4; speculation in grain in, 224; wheat production in, 241, 242
Switzerland, 225, 242
T
Taylor, Dr., 40
Taylor, Hon. William, 39, 40
Tecumseh, 4
Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean Railroad, 144
Telegraph, 49, 50, 70, 131, 210
Telephone, 210
Temperance society at Saratoga, 7
Tennessee, Scotch-Irish in, 20; first Reaper purchased in, 63; comparison of grain production of, 242
Tennyson, 1, 51
Texas, Scotch-Irish in, 20; not in the Union in 1831, 51
Theatres in early Chicago, 70, 71
Thompson, J. Edgar, 101
Tilden, 76, 165
_Times_, Chicago, 166
_Times_, London, 130
Town and city dwellers, proportion of, 195, 196
Town laborers become farmers, 11
Trans-Siberian railway, 212
Transportation charges on wheat, 213
Transportation of Reapers from Virginia farm, 64
_Tribune_, of Chicago, founded, 71
Trolley, introduction of, 210
Tunis, 242
Turks in Servia (1809), 4
Tutwiler, Colonel, 63
Twine-mill in McCormick factory, Chicago, 197
Twine self-binders, 115-118, 121
Tyre, King of, 206
Tyrol, riot in (1809), 4
U
Ulster, county of, 19, 21, 22
Union Army in Rockbridge County, Virginia, 36
Union Pacific Railway, 144
United States, in 1809, 4 _et seq._; Scotch-Irish in, 18-21; papers printed in (1831), 48; railways in (1831), 49; extent and development of (1831), 50; Buffalo chief grain market of, 69; London Exposition display from, 126; inventions credited to, 130; reasons why Reapers were invented in, 136, 201; McCormick's place in history of, 153; production of wheat in, 188, 189; manufacturing and labor in (1884), 189; Reaper little used in, until after 1849, 190; Reaper appreciated in, 191; industrial supremacy of, 195, 229; harvesting machinery industry in, 201; wheat crop of, 209; cost of production of wheat in, 209; railway across, 211; grain inspection in, 222; speculation in, 225; cultivation of semi-arid land in, 228; consumption of bread in, 239; area and population of, compared with India, 242, 243
V
Van Buren, Martin, 76, 178
Vermont hay crop, relative value of, 5
Victoria, Queen, 125, 132
Virchow, 51
"Virginia Reapers," 64
Virginia, Scotch-Irish in, 20; main wheat State in 1831, 51, 193; supremacy passing to Ohio, 67
W
Wages of harvesters at time of introduction of Reaper, 38
Wallace, Andrew, 40
Wallace, Henry, 106, 107
_Wallace's Farmer_, 106
Walton, N. Y., 76
Warder Reaper manufacturer, 103, 120
Warehouses at Reaper agencies, 83, 84
Warfare, expenses of modern, 233
Washburn, William D., 235, 236
Washington, George, 5, 6, 11, 15, 17, 20, 81, 234
Washington State, 238
Watson, Peter H., 91, 99
Watt, 131
Weaving machinery, inventors of, 53
Webster, Daniel, 15, 76, 95, 164
Weed, Thurlow, 72
West, orders for Reapers from the, 63; transportation to the, 64; McCormick visits the, 65; need of quicker method of cutting grain in the, 65, 66; Chicago helped by use of Reaper in, 73; McCormick's policy developed the, 86; Reaper preceded railway in the, 192; wheat crop of the, 193; railways in the, 211; Reaper advance-machine of civilization in, 227
Wet grain, adaptation of the Reaper to cut, 33, 61, 62
"Whaleback" grain ships, 210
Wheat, 51, 67, 69, 70, 73, 188-196, 201, 203, 205 _et seq._
Wheat Congress, international, 233
Wheat-ships, 210-213
Whiteley, William N., 45, 46, 120, 150
Whitney, Eli, 52, 97, 191
Whittier, 51
Willmoth, improver of battleship turret, 95
Wilson family from Ayrshire, Scotland, 86
Wilson, Hon. James, 86, 87, 192
Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 225
Wire self-binders displaced by twine self-binders, 115-117
Wisconsin, 50, 63, 114
Withington, Charles B., 109-115
Wood, Jethro, 49, 53
Wood, Walter A., 103, 112, 120
Woodworth, inventor, 95
World's Fair, Chicago, 1893, 124
Wright, Joseph A., 134
Written guarantees given with McCormick Reapers, 79
Y
Yellow fever in the McCormick family, 16
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Page 91: "Beverdy Johnson" corrected to "Reverdy Johnson."
Page 256: "see Blaine" corrected to "see Blame."