CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



same year, by the way, in which a babe named 

 Andrew Carnegie was born in the little Scotch 

 town of Dunfermline. 



For several years the furnace did fairly well. 

 It swallowed the ore and charcoal and limestone, 

 and poured into the channelled sand little sput- 

 tering streams of fiery metal. Cyrus made the 

 patterns for the moulds, and, because of his 

 great strength, did much of the heaviest labor. 

 But the work was so incessant that he had no 

 time to build Reapers. And in 1839, when the 

 effects of the 1837 panic were felt in the more 

 remote regions of Virginia, Cyrus McCormick 

 realized to the full the aptness of that couplet 

 of Hudibras - 



"Ah, me, the perils that environ 

 The man who meddles with cold iron! " 



The price of iron fell; debtors were unable 

 to pay; the school teacher signed over his prop- 

 erty to his mother; and the whole burden of 

 the inevitable bankruptcy fell upon the McCor- 

 micks. Cyrus gave up his farm to the creditors, 

 and whatever other property he had that was 

 saleable. He did not give up the Reaper, and 



[56] 



