CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



nearest town one of the McCormick agents, 

 ready to supply him with a Reaper, whether he 

 had the money to pay for it or not. As may be 

 imagined, the effect of this policy upon the settle- 

 ment and welfare of the West was magical. 

 There are to-day tens of thousands of Western 

 farmers who date the era of their prosperity 

 from the day when a McCormick Reaper arrived 

 in all the glory of its red paint and shining blade, 

 and held its first reception in the barn-yard. 



One instance of this deserves to be embodied 

 in the history of the Reaper. In 1855 a poor 

 tenant farmer, who had been evicted from his 

 rented land in Ayrshire, Scotland, arrived with 

 his family at the banks of the Mississippi. 

 There was then no railroad nor stage-coach, so 

 the whole family walked to a quarter section 

 of land farther west, not far from where the city 

 of Des Moines stands to-day. The first year 

 they cut the wheat with the cradle and the 

 scythe, and the following year they bought a 

 McCormick Reaper. They prospered. The 

 father went back for a visit to Ayrshire and paid 

 all his creditors. And the eldest son, James, 



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