CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



of American grain went to Europe in 1861, and 

 fifty-six million bushels in the following year. 

 More than two hundred million bushels were 

 exported during the four years of the war. Thus 

 the Reaper not only released men to fight for 

 the preservation of the Union. It not only fed 

 them while they were in the field. It did more. 

 It saved us from bankruptcy as well as famine, 

 and kept our credit good among foreign nations 

 at the most critical period in our history. 



After the Civil War came the settling of the 

 West; and here again the Reaper was indispens- 

 able. In most cases it went ahead of the rail- 

 road. The first Reaper arrived in Chicago three 

 years before the first locomotive. "We had a 

 McCormick Reaper in 1856," said James Wil- 

 son; "and at that time there was no railroad 

 within seventy-five miles of our Iowa farm. The 

 Reaper worked a great revolution, enabling one 

 man to do the work that many men had been 

 doing, and do it better. By means of it the West 

 became a thickly settled country, able to feed 

 the nation and to spare bread and meat for the 

 outside world." 



[192] 



