CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



proper way of cutting it. As many as 20,000 

 Reapers of all kinds were made in 1860; and 

 McCormick's factory had grown to be the pride 

 of Chicago. It was 90 by 150 feet in size, two 

 stories high, and gave work to about a hundred 

 and twenty men. 



As early as 1852 a fantastic self -rake Reaper 

 had been invented by a mechanical genius 

 named Jearum Atkins. This man was a bed- 

 ridden cripple, who, to while away the tiresome 

 hours of his confinement, bought a McCormick 

 Reaper, had it placed outside his window, and 

 actually devised an attachment to it which 

 automatically raked off the cut grain in bundles. 

 It was a grotesque contrivance. The farmers 

 nicknamed it the "Iron Man." It consisted of 

 an upright post, with two revolving iron arms. 

 These arms whirled stiffly around, windmill 

 fashion, and scraped the grain from the plat- 

 form to the ground. 



An amusing anecdote of this machine was 

 told by Henry Wallace, known to all farmers of 

 the Middle West as the founder of Wallace's 

 Farmer. "The first Reaper that my father 



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