i 



CHAPTER IX 



McCORMICK AS A MANUFACTURER 



F I had given up business, I would have 

 been dead long ago," said Cyrus H. Mc- 

 Cormick in 1884, only a few weeks before his 

 death; and this statement was by no means an 

 exaggeration. His business was his life. It 

 was not a definite, walled-off fraction of his life, 

 as with most men. It was the whole of it. His 

 business was his work, his play, his religion, his 

 grand opera, his education. There was business 

 even in his love-letters and his dreams. 



McCormick believed in business. He had 

 the sturdy pride of a "John Halifax, Gentle- 

 man." He never wanted to be anything else 

 but a worker. He never wasted a breath in 

 wishing for an easier life. He worked hard for 

 twenty-five years after he had made his fortune, 

 because he believed in work and commerce and 

 the reciprocities of trade. He was never dazzled 

 nor deflected for a moment by the pomps and 

 pageantries of the world, and for the glory that 



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