CHAPTER XI 



THE REAPER AND THE NATION 

 X \ THEN Cyrus H. McCormick died in 1884 

 he had provided hunger-insurance for the 

 United States and the greater part of the civil- 

 ized world. In that year his own factory made 

 50,000 harvesting machines, and there were in 

 use, in all countries, more than 500,000 Mc- 

 Cormick machines, doing the work of 5,000,000 

 men in the harvest fields. The United States 

 was producing wheat at the rate of ten bushels 

 per capita, instead of four, as it had been in 

 1847, when McCormick built his first factory in 

 Chicago. And the total production of wheat 

 in all lands was 2,240,000,000 bushels 

 enough to give an abundance of food to 325,- 

 000,000 people. 



Chicago, in 1884, was a powerful city of six 

 hundred thousand population. It had grown 

 sixty-fold since McCormick rode into it by stage 

 in 1845. It had 3,519 manufacturing estab- 

 lishments, giving work to 80,000 men and 



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