CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



wheat to feed ten people for a year. Each 

 family could do no more than feed one other 

 family and itself. This was the Tragedy of 

 the Wheat. There was never enough of it. It 

 was so precious that none could be sure of it 

 except the kings and the nobilities. As for the 

 masses of peasantry who sowed the wheat and 

 reaped it with hand-sickles, they would almost 

 as soon have thought of wearing diamonds as 

 of eating white bread. 



Then, in 1831, came the Reaper. It was not 

 invented in any of the older countries, nor in 

 any of the great cities of the world. For five 

 thousand years neither the peasants nor the 

 kings had conceived of any better way of reap- 

 ing wheat than with the sickle and the scythe. 

 /The man who had cut the Gordian knot of 

 / Famine was the son of a citizen-farmer, Cyrus 

 Hall McCormick by name, Scotch-Irish by race, 

 American by birth, and inventor by heredity 

 Vand early training. 



This new machine, the Reaper, when it was 

 full-grown into the self-binder, was equal to 

 forty sickles. With one man to drive it, it 



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