HIS LIFE AND WORK 



unable to walk, would have himself pushed in a 

 wheeled chair through the various buildings of 

 his immense plant, to make sure that every part 

 of the great mechanism was working smoothly. 



Of all the competitors who had fought him 

 in the early days, before the Civil War, there 

 were few now remaining. Hussey, his first 

 antagonist, had sold out to a mowing machine 

 syndicate in 1861. Emerson, Seymour, and 

 Morgan had decided not to make self-binders. 

 Jerome Fassler, of Springfield, Ohio, took his 

 fortune of two million dollars and went to New 

 York City in 1882 with a scheme to build a sub- 

 way. Manny was dead, and very few were 

 living of those who had seen the Reaper of 1831. 



John P. Adriance, of Poughkeepsie, had sur- 

 vived. He was a gentle-natured man, who was 

 content with a small and safe percentage of the 

 business. Byron E. Huntley, of Batavia, had 

 also built up a small, but solidly based, enter- 

 prise. He had been the office-boy, in 1845, in 

 the factory where the first hundred McCormick 

 Reapers were made; and he had been a manu- 

 facturer on his own account since 1850. He, 



[119] 



