CYRUS HALL McCORMlCK 



straight and was perfectly willing to be cut, 

 might have been fairly useful. They assuredly 

 might have succeeded if grain grew in a parlor. 

 But to cut actual grain in actual fields was an- 

 other matter, and quite beyond their power. 

 None of them, apparently, knew the funda- 

 mental difference between a Reaper and a 

 mower. They did not observe that grain is easy 

 to cut but hard to handle, while grass is hard to 

 cut and easy to handle; and they persisted in 

 the assumption that grain could be reaped by 

 a mower. 



These inventors who failed, but who doubtless 

 blazed the way by their failures to the final suc- 

 cess of McCormick, were not, as he was, a prac- 

 tical farmer on rough and hilly ground. One 

 was a clergyman, who devised a six- wheel 

 chariot, with many pairs of scissors, and which 

 was to be pushed by horses and steered by a 

 rudder that in rough ground would jerk a man's 

 arm out of joint. A second of these inventors 

 was a sailor, who experimented with a few 

 stalks of straight grain stuck in gimlet holes in 

 his workshop floor. A third was an actor, 



[4*] 



