HIS LIFE AND WORK 



who had built a Reaper that would cut artificial 

 grain on the stage. A fourth was a school- 

 teacher, a fifth a machinist, and so on. In no 

 instance can we find that any one of these 

 pre-McCormick inventors was a farmer, who 

 therefore knew what practical difficulties had 

 to be overcome. 



The farmers, on the other hand, thought 

 first of these difficulties and scoffed at the parlor 

 inventors. The editor of the "Farmer's Reg- 

 ister" spoke the opinion of most farmers of that 

 time when he said that "an insurmountable 

 difficulty will sometimes be found to the use of 

 reaping-machines in the state of the growing 

 crops, which may be twisted and laid flat in 

 every possible direction. A whole crop may be 

 ravelled and beaten down by high winds and 

 heavy rains in a single day." 



One of the basic reasons, therefore, for the 

 success of Cyrus McCormick was the fact that 

 he was not a parlor inventor. He was primarily 

 a farmer. He knew what wheat was and how it 

 grew. And his first aim in making a reaper was 

 not to produce a mechanical curiosity, nor to 



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