ne was
a failure. Not till McCormick had gone on horseback among the farmers of
Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and secured written orders for
his reapers, did he persuade a firm in Cincinnati to make them. In 1845,
five hundred were manufactured; in 1850, three thousand. In 1851
McCormick placed one on exhibition at the World's Fair in London, and
astonished the world with its performance. To-day two hundred thousand
are turned out annually, and without them the great grain fields of the
middle West and the far West would be impossible. The harvester has
cheapened the cost of bread, and benefited the whole human race.

%412. The Telegraph.%--Think, again, what would be our condition if
every telegraph line in the world were suddenly pulled down. Yet the
telegraph, like the reaper and the sewing machine, was introduced
slowly. Samuel F. B. Morse got his patent in 1837; and for seven years,
helped by Alfred Vail, he struggled on against poverty. In 1842 he had
but thirty-seven cents in the world. But perseverance conquers all
things; and with thirty thousand dollars, granted by Congress, the first
telegraph line in the world was built in 1844 from Baltimore to
Washington. In 1845 New York and Philadelphia were connected; but as
wires could not be made to work under water, the messages were received
on the New Jersey side of the Hudson and carried to New York by boat. By
1856 the telegraph was in use in the most populous states. Some forty
companies, but one of which paid dividends, competed for the business.
This was ruinous; and in 1856 a union of Western companies was formed
and called the Western Union Telegraph Company. To-day it has 21,000
offices, sends each year some 58,000,000 messages, receives about
$23,000,000, and does seven eighths of all the telegraph business in the
United States.

%413. India Rubber.%--The same year (1844) which witnessed the
introduction of the telegraph saw the perfection of Goodyear's secret
for the vulcanization of India rubber. In 1820 the first pair of rubber
shoes ever seen in the United States were exhibited in Boston. Two years
later a ship from South America brought 500 pairs of rubber shoes. They
were thick, heavy, and ill-shaped; but they sold so rapidly that more
were imported, and in 1830 a cargo of raw gum was brought from South
America for the purpose of making rubber goods. With this C. M. Chaffee
went to work and succeeded in producing some pieces of cloth spread