CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



the great invention of McCormick, there would 

 never have been an hour's delay in granting all 

 that he asks. I know, and I state here, in the 

 face of the American Senate and the world, that 

 these men have beset me at every corner of the 

 street with their papers and their affidavits - 

 men who have no claim to the ear of the coun- 

 try, men who have rendered it no service, 

 but who have invested their paltry dollars 

 in the production of a machine which sprang 

 from the mind of another man; and who now, 

 for their own gain, employ lawyers to draw 

 cunning affidavits, to devise cunning schemes, 

 and to put on foot all sorts of machinery to 

 defeat McCormick." 



What worried McCormick most w r as not this 

 consolidation of competitors, but the fact that 

 a few farmers had signed petitions of protest 

 against his claim. This was "the most unkind- 

 est cut of all." But he made no attack upon 

 them. Manufacturers he would fight, and in- 

 ventors and lawyers and judges any one and 

 every one, if need be, except farmers. " HOW T 

 can the farmers be against me?" he asked in 



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