Cyrus McCormick: Inventor of the Mechanical Reaper

What is the definition of greatness? How may we recognise a great man or woman? Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) offers a possible definition: ‘And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together’. This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of a man who comes close to meeting the definition provided by the Church of Ireland’s most famous Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin, and one-time Prebend of Kilroot.

Cyrus Hall McCormick, the inventor of the mechanical reaper and philanthropist, was born on 15 February 1809 at ‘Walnut Grove’, the McCormick family farm in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Rockbridge County is in the Shenandoah Valley, an area of Ulster-Scots settlement on the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The McCormicks were descendants of James McCormick, one of the defenders of Londonderry in the great siege of 1689. James McCormick was one of the signatories of the address of the city and garrison of Londonderry presented to William III by Revd George Walker.  The McCormicks had their origins near Ballygawley, Co. Tyrone, close to where President Grant’s Simpson ancestors had their roots.

Robert Hall McCormick (1780-1846), Cyrus’s father had patented a number of agricultural implements and spent 28 years working on a horse-drawn mechanical reaper but success just eluded him. In 1831 he handed the project to his son, who had already developed a variety of plough designs. Drawing on the work of his father, Cyrus managed to design and built the first practical reaping machine within 18 months. According to some accounts, Cyrus McCormick may have even designed, built, and tested his reaper all within six weeks.

Shortly after constructing his first reaper Cyrus went on to harvest his first crop with it later that year, harvesting an acre an hour. Cyrus invited his neighbours to see the world’s first mechanical reaper in action. Astonishingly, they failed to recognize the evidence of their own eyes and how the machine had the potential to transform their lives. They thought it was all just entertainment. They would watch Cyrus harvest and then they would return home and use their old hand scythes. They would say things like, ‘I'm running a farm, not a circus’.

The disappointing reaction of his neighbours may explain why Cyrus did not patent his machine until 1834, the year after Obed Hussey of Cincinnati, Ohio, patented his reaper.

In 1839 Cyrus and Leander J. McCormick, his brother, moved to Chicago where they established what was to become the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, a huge factory complex for manufacturing agricultural implements. In 1843 Cyrus sold 29 reapers and each year after that he sold more and more. By 1850, he was selling 5,000 reapers a year. By that stage Cyrus and Leander had been joined by their brother William in the business.

As American agriculture was beginning a period of rapid expansion, Obed Hussey and Cyrus’s inventions proved timely. There was intense competition between the two men and indeed other rival manufacturers but Cyrus McCormick was to emerge as the market leader for two reasons: First, the ever innovative Cyrus constantly returned to the drawing board to revise and improve his basic design, producing new models almost every decade.

Secondly, Cyrus was a superb businessman, carefully using newspaper advertising and manipulating newspaper editorials to promote sales. Cyrus’s glossy posters were well ahead of their time in sales psychology. He also employed a vast network of trained salesmen able to demonstrate operation of the machines in the field. The expansion of the American railroad network allowed the wide distribution of their agricultural machinery to hitherto distant market areas.

Because of Cyrus’s efforts in making harvesting grain easier and inventing the reaper, his invention allowed farmers the world over to harvest grain faster and cheaper than ever before. Prior to inventing the reaper, farmers could only harvest 1/2 an acre a day; after the reaper was invented, farmers could harvest 12 acres a day. Thus, farmers were able to conserve money by using less manual labour, a point which also potentially served to undermine the case for the American South’s ‘peculiar institution’ as slavery was euphemistically described. The mechanical reaper did not require a person to toil all day to harvest crops. Instead, a farmer merely needed to operate the machine and the reaper would do the rest of the work. Cyrus’s work allowed farmers to cultivate plots of land bigger than ever thought possible.

Hence, the observation of the prominent (and controversial)American politician William H. Seward, the Governor of New York and Secretary of State to Presidents Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, that as a result of McCormick’s invention ‘the line of civilization moves westward thirty miles each year’. The McCormick reaper truly unlocked the Midwest as the granary of the world.

Cyrus’s invention secured him an international reputation and international recognition. In 1851 at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, organized by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, his reaper won a Gold Medal. In France Cyrus was elected a corresponding member of the prestigious Academy of Sciences. In the Academy’s estimation, Cyrus had ‘done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man’, an observation with resonances of Jonathan Swift.

The young Cyrus McCormick’s goal was to earn a million dollars. In 1833 that was a huge amount of money when one considers that the average worker only earned a nickel (five cents) an hour. By the late 1850s he had earned a million dollars. He had also changed the way people farmed, with his wheat harvester called the reaper. In the great tradition of American philanthropy Cyrus and his wife were very generous benefactors of the poor and the needy.

Cyrus Hall McCormick died in Chicago on 13 May 1884. In 1902 the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company became part of International Harvester Company.

Cyrus McCormick transformed agriculture and made possible the  diversification of American industry. In 1831 90% of the US population was involved in farming. By 1870 only half of the US population was employed in agriculture. In 2006  less than one half per cent of the US population was directly employed in agriculture and yet that exceedingly modest proportion of the population produces more food than the entire country can consume.

The McCormick family farm in Rockbridge County where Cyrus invented the mechanical reaper was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.  There is a statue of McCormick on the front campus of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Virginia.