INTRODUCTION 



past three centuries to have stopped the advance 

 of our civilization." From this point of view, 

 there are few, if any, who will appear to be 

 more indispensable than McCormick. He was 

 not brilliant. He was not picturesque. He was 

 no caterer for fame or favor. But he was as 

 necessary as bread. He fed his country as 

 truly as Washington created it and Lincoln 

 preserved it. He abolished our agricultural 

 peasantry so effectively that we have had to 

 import our muscle from foreign countries ever 

 since. And he added an immense province to 

 the new empire of mind over matter, the ex- 

 pansion of which has been and is now the 

 highest and most important of all human en- 

 deavors. 



As the master builder of the modern business 

 of manufacturing farm machinery, McCormick 

 set in motion so many forces of human better- 

 ment that the fruitfulness of his life can never 

 be fully told. There are to-day in all countries 

 more than one hundred thousand patents for 

 inventions that were meant to lighten the labor 

 of the farmer. And the cereal crop of the 



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