CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



hours; with a self-binder, it is now ten minutes. 

 And so, because of these amazing results, the 

 rattle of the harvester has become an indispen- 

 sable part of the music of our industrial orches- 

 tra, harmonious with the click of the telegraph 

 key, the ring of the telephone bell, the hum of 

 the sewing-machine, the roar of the Bessemer 

 converter, the gong of the trolley, the whistle 

 of the steamboat, and the puff of the locomotive. 

 Next to the Reaper, the most important fac- 

 tors in this world-mechanism of the bread, are 

 the Railroad and the Steamboat. These ar- 

 rived on the scene just at the right time to dis- 

 tribute the surplus that the Reaper produced. 

 The Steamboat, and its humble relative, the 

 barge, came first. The Erie Canal of 1825, 

 the Suez Canal of 1869, and the Sault Ste. 

 Marie Canal of 1881, were built largely for 

 the carrying of the wheat. By 1856 wheat was 

 on its way from Chicago to Europe; and four 

 years later the first wheat-ship curved around 

 Cape Horn from California. Ten years ago 

 an entirely new kind of ship, a sort of immense 

 steel bag called a "whaleback," was built to 



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