CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



had been imprisoned for debt in New York in a 

 single year, and a workingmen's party had 

 sprung up as a protest against such intolerable 

 conditions. Even as late as 1837 there was a 

 bread riot in the city of New York. Five thou- 

 sand hungry rioters broke into the warehouse 

 of Eli Hart & Company, and destroyed a great 

 quantity of flour and wheat. Five hundred 

 barrels of flour were thrown from the windows; 

 and women and children gathered it up greedily 

 from the dirty gutter where it fell. 



So the world that confronted Cyrus McCor- 

 mick was not a friendly world of science and 

 invention and prosperity. It was slow and dull 

 and largely hostile to whoever would teach it a 

 better way of working. And we shall now see 

 by what means McCormick compelled it to 

 accept his Reaper, and to give him the credit and 

 pay for his invention. 



He was resolved from the first not to be robbed 

 and flung aside as most inventors had been. 

 Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, had 

 said in 1812: "The whole amount I have re- 

 ceived is not equal to the value of the labor saved 



[52] 



