CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



draught, instead of a "push" machine. And 

 the seventh and final factor was the building of 

 the whole Reaper upon one big driving -wheel, 

 which carried the weight and operated the reel 

 and cutting-blade. The grain-side end of the 

 blade was at first supported by a wooden runner, 

 and later the following year by a small 

 wheel. 



Such was the making of the first practical 

 Reaper in the history of the world. It was as 

 clumsy as a Red River ox-cart; but it reaped. 

 It was made on right lines. The "new princi- 

 ple" that the youth McCormick laboriously con- 

 ceived in the little log workshop became the 

 basic type of a wholly new machine. It has 

 never been displaced. Since then there have 

 been 12,000 patents issued for reaper and mower 

 inventions; but not one of them has overthrown 

 the type of the first McCormick Reaper. Not 

 one of the seven factors that he assembled has 

 been thrown aside; and the most elaborate self- 

 binder of to-day is a direct descendant of the 

 crude machine that was thus created by a young 

 Virginian farmer in 1831. 



[34] 



