28

Cyrus Hall McCormick

1809–1884

 

History (in the schoolbook sense of the word) seems to be dominated by political figures who create their own self-importance.  It is often forgotten what profounder social changes are brought about in the human condition by those who push forward not political but technical change.  Their influence is what really creates and changes the world.

      Americans in the nineteenth century felt themselves less bound by conventional ideas than Europeans did, and this was especially true of inventors.  The McCormick dynasty, Ulstermen by origin, are among these.  Robert McCormick (1870-1846) was a farmer dependent on labour, which was often in short supply, so he contrived many labour-saving devices for work on the farm and fields.  In 1809 he invented a reaping machine, which he improved by degrees over the years, incorporating into it a horizontal reel and vibrating sickle.  Though he was a pioneer of mechanized farming and popularized harvesting machines throughout the United States, he was not the first.

      The first application of steam to the plough was patented by the Irish landlord Richard Lovell Edgeworth (the father of the novelist MARIA EDGEWORTH [91]), but this was not developed until 1852.  A reaping machine had been invented by the Rev. Mr Bell of Carmylie, Forfarshire.  But invention was one thing, development for widespread use another.  In the opening up of the American continent, the nation was faced with what seemed to be limitless acres of arable land on the western prairies.  As the founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Corporation, which was influential in the introduction of the harvesting machine throughout the United States, Robert McCormick was the true pioneer of industrialized agriculture.

      His son was Cyrus Hall McCormick, who inherited his father's interests.  He was born in Walnut Grove, Rockbridge County, Virginia - a name redolent of the older forms of agriculture.  In 1831, at the age of twenty-two, he took up the challenge that had defeated his father, to construct a really workable grain-cutting machine.  His reaper, a development of his father's earlier and cruder machine, was first used in the late harvest of 1831 and patented in 1834.  It transformed the nature of agriculture and the provision of food to the great urban centres, which were emerging in America and Europe in the nineteenth century.

      It should be remembered that in 1820, the population of the United States was 12, 866, 020, centred in Moorefield, West Virginia.  By 1880 the population, now demographically centred in Ohio, had grown to 50, 155, 783; the state of New York alone had a population of five million.  By the turn of the century the national population had grown to nearly seventy-six million.  It was to feed these teeming masses that mass-produced food was needed.

      The Irish writer JONATHAN SWIFT [34] had remarked that whoever could make two ears of corn grow where only one grew before deserved better of mankind and did a more essential service to his country 'than the whole race of politicians put together'.  Growing ears of corn was one thing; harvesting them for the market, as the McCormicks did, was just as important a service to humanity.

      Further years perfected the harvesting machine.  By 1843 McCormick was able to sell the rights, and with the capital set up a factory in Chicago in 1847.  One of his new machines was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 - perhaps the most important showcase of new ideas ever held.  The Times of London, the leading British paper of the day, said that if McCormick's machine fulfilled its promise, it alone was worth the cost of the whole exhibition.

      Like most inventors and manufacturers, McCormick was beset by legal problems: inventors are notoriously litigious.  There were other inventors in the field as well, such as Obed Hussey, who announced his invention of a reaping machine in 1834.  Yet the factory flourished.  During the Civil War, McCormick's machines helped to make the Union victory possible by ensuring a food supply to the armies in the field.

      The firm expanded in the years after the Civil War, when the western regions of both the United States and Canada began to develop.  New markets were found in Europe and elsewhere.  In 1871 the family, having lived in Washington, New York and Europe, settled permanently in Chicago.  Cyrus was awarded many prizes and distinctions.  In 1879 the Academy of Sciences in France elected him a corresponding member for having done more for agriculture than any other living man.

      Cyrus Sr died in Chicago on May 13th, 1884, and was in turn succeeded by his son, Cyrus Hall McCormick II (1859-1936), then only twenty-four.  A serious-minded young man, he was already well versed in the details of both the machines and the business.  He settled all the outstanding legal problems with fellow inventors, and began a new stage in the development of the firm.

      In 1902 the firm became the International Harvester Company, one of the largest corporations in the world.  Inevitably, the size and near monopoly of the firm attracted the attention of federal trust-busters, but the company eventually came out of this confrontation intact.  Cyrus II ceased the day-to-day direction of the firm in 1918, and died in June 1936.

      As befitted their Ulster origins, the McCormicks were Presbyterians and gave freely to many church and philanthropic causes, especially the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).  Yet their inventions more profoundly shaped western life than any charity.  They literally helped put bread on the tables of the industrial masses for a century or more, and their enterprise lies behind the extraordinary agribusinesses of today.  While such people as Cyrus Hall McCormick may not always appear in history books, the influence they have exerted over the shape and structure of modern life is profound.  But mere inventors do not often receive their just honours.