CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



A patent was supposed to protect an inventor 

 for fourteen years, and he had lost half of this 

 time in making a better machine, and in finding 

 out the best way to carry on the business. He 

 had received from all sources nearly $24,000, and 

 most of it had been swallowed up in expenses. 

 He was still a poor man in 1848. He was no 

 more than on the threshold of prosperity. And 

 his peculiar difficulty, which gave him a special 

 claim upon the Patent Commissioners, was the 

 shortness of the harvest season. He had only 

 three or four weeks in each year in which he 

 could make experiments. 



For eight years McCormick's claim was tossed 

 back and forth like a tennis ball between the 

 Patent Office and Congress. This delay threw 

 the door wide open to competition. A score of 

 manufacturers built factories and began to make 

 McCormick Reapers, with trifling variations and 

 under other names. If McCormick had won 

 his case, they would have had to pay him a 

 royalty of $25 on each machine. Conse- 

 quently, they combined against him. They 

 hired lawyers and lobbyists, secured petitions 



[92] 



