The Romance of the Reaper Part 4

It was a year of dread and paralysis. But Deering faced these disadvantages with ability, with sheer, dogged persistence, and with business training. In seven years he had become one of the greatest of the harvester kings, and was leading them all up to a higher level.

We shall understand more clearly what this means if we consider the state of the trade at the time of his entrance. A man of peaceable and kindly inclinations, Deering was dragged into a business that was as turbulent as a bull-fight. For as the reaper had evolved, it had become a bone of contention, and it remained so from the first patent to the last. The opening battle was fought by McCormick and Hussey, each claiming to have been the Christopher Columbus of the business. After the gold-rush of 1849 new types of reapers sprang up on all sides. The crude machines that merely cut the grain were driven out by others that automatically raked the cut grain into bundles. These were soon followed by a combined reaper and mower, which held the field until the Marsh harvester was invented, as we have seen, at the close of the Civil War.

Among these different types of reapers, and the numerous variations of each type, the bitterest rivalries prevailed. There was no pool, no "gentlemen's agreement," no "community of interest." Indeed, the "harvester business" was not business. It was a riotous game of "Farmer, farmer, who gets the farmer?" The excited players cared less for the profits than for the victories. As fast as they made money, they threw it back into the game. Mechanics became millionaires, and millionaires became mechanics. The whole trade was tense with risk and rivalry and excitement, as though it were a search for gold along the high plateaus of the Rand.

And this in spite of the fact that, with the exception of McCormick, Osborne, and Whiteley, the men who came to be known as reaper kings were not naturally fighters. No business men were ever gentler than Deering, Glessner, Warder, Adriance, and Huntley. But the making of reapers was a new trade. It was like a vast, unfenced prairie, where every settler owned as much ground as he could defend.

Each step ahead meant a struggle for patents. Whoever built a reaper had to defend himself in the courts as well as approve himself in the harvest-fields. Cyrus H. McCormick, especially, as William Deering soon learned, wielded the Big Stick against every man who dared to make reapers. He was the old veteran of the trade, and he gave battle to his compet.i.tors as though they were a horde of trespa.s.sers. He was their common enemy, and the reaper money that was squandered on lawsuits brought a golden era of prosperity to the lawyers.

Some of these patent wars shook the country with the crash of hostile forces. The tide of battle rolled up to the Supreme Court and even into the halls of Congress. Once, in 1855 when McCormick charged full tilt upon John H. Manny, who was making reapers at Rockford, Illinois, a three-year struggle began that was the most noted legal duel of the day.

McCormick, to make sure of his victory, went into the fight with a battery of lawyers whom he thought invincible--William H. Seward, E. M. d.i.c.kerson, and Senator Reverdy Johnson. Manny made a giant effort at self-defence by hiring Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton, Stephen A. Douglas, Peter H.

Watson, George Harding, and Congressman H. Winter Davis.

From first to last it was a lawyers' battle, and McCormick was finally defeated by Stanton, who made an unanswerably eloquent speech. For this speech Stanton received $10,000, and Lincoln, who had made no speech at all, was given $1,000. Yet, in the long run, the man who profited by this lawsuit was Lincoln; for it was this money that enabled him to carry on his famous debate with Douglas, and thus made him the inevitable candidate of the Republican Party.

McCormick's most disastrous lawsuit was with D. M. Osborne and the Gordon brothers, of Rochester. In 1875 the Gordons had invented an attachment for a wire self-binder, and in a careless moment McCormick had signed a contract promising to make these self-binders and to pay $10 royalty on every machine. Then a man named Withington appeared with a much better self-binder. McCormick at once began to make the Withington machine and was sued by the Gordons.

At this time McCormick was over seventy years of age, and crippled with rheumatism; but he believed that the Gordons had deceived him and he fought them sternly as long as he lived. After his death, his eldest son, Cyrus, consented to a compromise, whereby Osborne, who was owner of a share in the Gordon concern, and the Gordons were to be paid $225,000. But in order to impress upon them the enormity of this amount, he prepared the money for them in small bills. When they called at the McCormick office in Chicago, they were taken to a small room on the top floor and shown a great pyramid of green currency.

"There is your money," said McCormick's lawyer. "Kindly count it and see if it is not a quarter of a million dollars."

The three men gasped with mingled ecstasy and consternation. "B--b--but,"

stammered one of them, "how can we take it away? Can't you give us a cheque?"

"That is the right amount, in legal money, gentlemen," replied the lawyer.

"All I will say is that there are a couple of old valises in the closet--and I wish you good afternoon."

For several hours...o...b..rne and the Gordons literally waded in affluence, counting the money and packing it in the valises. By the time they had finished, it was eight o'clock. The building was dark. The elevator was not running. They were hungry and terrified. Step by step they groped their trembling way downstairs, and staggered with their treasure through the perilous streets to the Grand Pacific Hotel. None of them ever forgot the terror of that night.

Another warlike Reaper King was "Bill" Whiteley, of Ohio. Whiteley had invented a combined mower and reaper in 1858, which he named the "Champion"; and he pushed this machine with an irresistible enthusiasm.

His mode of attack was not the patent suit, but the field test. This was the white-hot climax of the rivalry among the reaper kings; and it was great sport for the farmers. It was a reaper circus--a fierce chariot-race in a wheat-field; and its influence upon the industry was remarkable. It weeded out the low-grade machines. It spurred on the manufacturers to a campaign of improvement. It developed American harvesters to the highest point of perfection. It swung the farmers into the new path of scientific agriculture. And it piled expenses so high that few of the reaper kings escaped disaster.

A field test was conducted in this fas.h.i.+on: A committee of judges was appointed, and several acres of ripe grain were selected as the battle-field. After the field was marked off into equal sections, each reaper took its place. There were sometimes two reapers and sometimes forty. The signal was given. "Crack"--the horses leaped; the drivers shouted; and hundreds of farmers surged up and down in excited crowds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ASA S. BUSHNELL

BENJAMIN H. WARDER

HON. THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE

DAVID M. OSBORNE]

"All's fair in a field test," said the reaper agents who superintended these contests; though each man said it to himself. They were a hardy and reckless body of men, half cowboy, half mechanic, and no trick was too dangerous or too desperate for them. Often the feud was so bitter that bodyguards of big-fisted "bulldozers" were on the spot to protect the warrior of their tribe who was in danger. "I had four men with me once who together weighed 1,000 pounds," said A. E. Mayer, who is now the general of an army of 40,000 salesmen. In most tests the machines were shamefully abused. Self-binders were made to cut and bind stubble as though it were grain. Mowers were driven full tilt against stumps and hop-poles. Rival reapers were chained back to back and yanked apart by plunging horses. The warrior agents exposed the weak points in each other's machines. They photographed each other's breakdowns, and bragged to the limit of their vocabularies. They raised prices in one town and cut them in the next; for when their fighting blood was aroused--and that was often--they cared no more for profits than a small boy cares for his clothes.

To give only one instance out of hundreds, here is a picture of a field test that I found in the diary of B. B. Clarke, of Madison, who is now the editor of the _American Thresherman_, but who was in the eighties a harvester fighter in Indiana.

"We drove fourteen miles to the wheat-field, which was also the battle-field," he wrote, "and found a heavy crop of rank grain, wild pea vines, morning glories and other vegetation, which tested both machines to the limit. The bundles were twisted together by the vines into almost a continuous rope. After adjusting the machine, we had to 'open the field.'

This is considered the most severe test, as the machine, the horses and all are in the grain.

"A---- drove the team, a magnificent pair of big grays. McK---- watched the binder, while Y---- and I created sympathy for our cause among the farmers who had come to see the fight. With a crack of his whip and a shout to his team, A---- opened the ball. The machine was so crowded with grain and weeds that the sickle could not be heard fifty feet away. He cleared the first round without a stop. Then the other machine followed, but the driver, failing to recognise the necessity of fast driving, allowed his machine to clog, and lost the day. We received two hundred dollars in gold on the spot for our victorious binder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SELF-BINDER IN SCOTLAND, WITH THE WALLACE MONUMENT IN THE BACKGROUND]

"On returning to Fort Wayne we found the E---- people, whose headquarters were separated by a part.i.tion wall from ours, had coaxed one of our customers to cancel his order, and subst.i.tute their machine. For this act, we retaliated and replaced three of their orders the following week, and while loading these into the farmers' wagons a fight took place between the opposing factions. I looked as though I had encountered a flax-hackle.

The next day hostilities opened early with three on our side to six of the E---- host, requiring a riot alarm and a wagon-load of police to restore order.

"We had swept the enemy before us, using neck-yokes, pitman rods and even six shooters in the grand finale. Our expense account for that week included fifty dollars for lawyers' fees, which was promptly O. K.'d by the manager. After all, I had only obeyed instructions, which were to get the business and hold up prices, 'peaceably if you can, but forcibly if you must.'"

An interesting relic of these fierce days of cut-throat compet.i.tion was given to me by Mr. John F. Steward. It reads as follows:--

TO AGENTS FOR THE SALE OF HARVESTING MACHINERY:

The undersigned, manufacturers of harvesting machinery, call the attention of their travelling experts and local agents to a practice which has grown among them for a few years past, and which has become so disreputable and is carried to such an extent that we feel it necessary to bring it to your special notice. _It is the habit of trying to break up sales made by other agents when you have not been successful in securing the sale._ It has become a very common practice, as soon as a sale is made by one agent, for the agents of all other machines to try to break up that sale, by misrepresentations or by lowering the price, or by trying to convince the purchaser that the machine which he has bargained for is not as good as the one which the other agent sells. This practice is disreputable, and should not be tolerated by any manufacturer. We wish it now thoroughly understood that we will not tolerate this practice in any agent, and we will be glad to have reports from you of the agents of any machines who have tried to break up your sales of our machines in this way. There is nothing that tends more to demoralise business than this practice, and we wish it stopped.

Machines should be sold upon their merits, and not by disparaging or running down other machines. You will find that your customers will place more reliance upon what you say if you leave all other machines alone, and show the good features of your own and demonstrate them in actual work. An agent never makes any progress by running down or trying to show the defects of others, and you will be better able to sustain your prices and the reputation of your machines by following the course indicated above. Therefore, it is our wish that you should hold to your prices firmly, present your machines in the very best possible light, and use all honourable means for making a fair and honest sale; but if you are unfortunate enough to lose your sale, and some compet.i.tor gains it, don't be persuaded to put yours in the field by the side of your compet.i.tor, or try in any way to break up the sale; and do not, until the purchaser has discarded another machine, offer to put one of ours in its place.

Of course we do not mean by this that you shall stand quietly by and see other agents break up your sales, or if others habitually do this that you shall not retaliate, but you must not be the first to inaugurate this practice. We are always ready to meet fair and honest compet.i.tion.

We want our business conducted in a fair and honourable way, and not descend to ways that are discreditable to us and to you. No one agent can expect to sell all the machines that are wanted in his district, for the poorest machine will have some friends, and, though he may have the very best one, we do not expect he will make every one see it. Let the purchaser take the risk. If he buys an inferior machine he should take the consequences, as if he was deceived or mistaken in his judgment in buying a horse. In such a case you would not think of putting your horse in work the purchaser was doing, to show him yours was the best, with the expectation that he would return the one he had bought because it did not prove quite equal to yours in drawing a load or in driving. If you would not in the case of a horse, why should you, in the case of a mower, reaper, or self-binding harvester? Our advice to you is:

1st. Hold firmly to your prices.

2d. Sell your own machine. Convince your purchaser that you have the best machine made.

3d. Settle for the machine at time of delivery. A machine works much better after being settled for.

4th. If you lose the sale do not try to break up the sale of your compet.i.tor. It won't pay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Signatures]

The king of the field test was William N. Whiteley. No other reaper king, in any country, received as much renown from his personal exploits. He was the Charlemagne of the harvest-field. He was as tall as a sapling and as strong as a tree. As a professor in the great field school of agriculture, he has never been surpa.s.sed. He could out-talk, outwork, and generally outwit the men who were sent against him. He was a whole exhibition in himself. "I've seen Bill Whiteley racin' his horses through the grain and leanin' over with his long arms to pick the mice's nests from just in front of the knife," said an old Ohio settler.

The feat that first made Whiteley famous was performed at Jamestown, Ohio, in 1867. His compet.i.tor was doing as good work as he was; whereupon he sprang from his seat, unhitched one horse, and finished his course with a single, surprised steed pulling the heavy machine. His compet.i.tor followed suit, and succeeded fully as well. This enraged Whiteley, who at that time was as powerful as a young Hercules.

"I can pull my reaper myself," he shouted, turning his second horse loose, and yoking his big shoulders into its harness. Such a thing had never been done before, and has never been done since; but it is true that, in the pa.s.sion of the moment, Whiteley was filled with such strength that he ran the reaper from one side of the field to the other, cutting a full swath--a deed that, had he done it in ancient Greece, would have placed him among the immortals. It was witnessed by five hundred farmers, and fully reported in the press. One of the reporters, as it happened, representing the _Cincinnati Commercial_, was a young Ohioan named Whitelaw Reid, now the American Amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James.

That ten minutes in a horse collar made $2,000,000 for Whiteley. His antagonist, Benjamin H. Warder, was filled with admiration for Whiteley's prowess, and at once proposed that they should quit fighting and work in harmony.

"Give me the right to make your reaper and I'll pay you $5 apiece for all I can sell," said Warder. "It's a bargain," responded Whiteley. And so there arose the first consolidation in the harvester business.

Whiteley and Warder did not merge their companies; but they divided the United States into three parts--one for Whiteley, one for his brother Amos, who also made reapers in Springfield, and one for Warder. They united in building a malleable iron foundry and a knife works, so that they could use better materials at a lower cost. They made the first handsome and shapely machines.

For twelve years this triple alliance led the way, and all others, even the mighty McCormick and the sagacious Deering, had to follow. The "Champion" reaper became the leading machine of the United States, and the little town of Springfield, Ohio, was known as the "Reaper City." As many as 160,000 reapers and mowers were sent out as a year's work. In all, 2,000,000 of Whiteley's "Champion" machines have been made in Springfield, and have sold at a gain of $18,000,000.