CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



There were times after the day's work was 

 done when he was too weary to walk home, 

 and would throw himself upon the stubble to 

 rest. 



At eighteen he set out to find his fortune in 

 the far West, became a Forty-niner, drifted to 

 Australia, and in 1855 came back to Janesville, 

 Wisconsin, with three thousand dollars or 

 more in his belt. All this money he proceeded 

 to fritter away on the invention of a self-rake 

 Reaper "a crazy scheme," as the towns- 

 people called it. As it happened, the whole 

 southern region of Wisconsin was being stirred 

 up at that time by the speeches of an inventive 

 Madison editor, who went by the name of 

 "Pump" Carpenter. Carpenter's hobby was 

 that the binding of grain must be done by 

 machinery. He was eloquent and popular, 

 and his arguments were substantiated by a little 

 model which he was accustomed to carry about 

 with him. Withington heard him speak and 

 was converted. He dropped his self-rake 

 reaper and went to work upon a self-binder. 

 He completed his first machine in 1872, and 



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