HIS LIFE AND WORK 



in one hour by my machines now in use." Fulton 

 had died at fifty, plagued and plundered by 

 imitators. Kay, Jacquard, Heathcoat, and Har- 

 greaves, inventors of weaving machinery, were 

 mobbed. Arkwright's mill was burned by in- 

 cendiaries. Gutenberg, Cort, and Jethro Wood 

 lost their fortunes. Palissy was thrown into the 

 Bastile. And Goodyear, who gave us rubber, 

 Bottgher, who gave us Sevres porcelain, and 

 Sauvage, who gave us the screw propeller, died 

 in poverty and neglect. 



But Cyrus McCormick was more than an 

 inventor. He was a business-builder. In the 

 same resolute, deliberate way in which he had 

 made his Reaper, he now set to work to make a 

 business. He planned and figured and made 

 experiments. " His whole soul was wrapped up 

 in his Reaper," said one of the neighbors. Once 

 while riding home on horseback in the Summer 

 of 1832, his horse stopped to drink in the centre 

 of a stream, and as he looked out upon the fields 

 of yellow grain, shimmering in the sunlight, the 

 dazzling thought flashed upon his brain, "Per- 

 haps I may make a million dollars from this 



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