s. Deering now appeared as the
owner of a startling invention by John F. Appleby. This did all that
the Withington machine did and did it better and quicker; and it had
the great advantage that it bound with twine instead of wire. The new
machine immediately swept aside all competitors; McCormick, to save his
reaper from disaster, presently perfected a twine binder of his own. The
appearance of Appleby's improvement in 1884 completes the cycle of the
McCormick reaper on its mechanical side The harvesting machine of fifty
nations today is the one to which Appleby put the final touches in 1884.
Since then nothing of any great importance has been added.

This outline of invention, however, comprises only part of the story.
The development of the reaper business presents a narrative quite as
adventurous as that of the reaper itself. Cyrus McCormick was not only
a great inventor; he was also a great businessman. So great was his
ability in this direction, indeed, that there has been a tendency to
discredit his achievements as a creative genius and to attribute his
success to his talents as an organizer and driver of industry. "I may
make a million dollars from this reaper," said McCormick, in the full
tide of enthusiasm over his invention; and these words indicate an
indispensable part of his program. He had no miserly instinct but he
had one overpowering ambition. It was McCormick's conviction, almost
religious in its fervor, that the harvester business of the world
belonged to him. As already indicated, plenty of other hardy spirits,
many of them almost as commanding personalities as himself, disputed the
empire. Not far from 12,000 patents on harvesting machines were granted
in this country in the fifty years following McCormick's invention, and
more than two hundred companies were formed to compete for the market.
McCormick always regarded these competitors as highwaymen who had
invaded a field which had been almost divinely set apart for himself. A
man of covenanting antecedents, heroic in his physical proportions, with
a massive, Jove-like head and beard, tirelessly devoted to his work,
watching every detail with a microscopic eye, marshaling a huge force
of workers who were as possessed by this one overruling idea as was
McCormick himself, he certainly presented an almost unassailable
battlefront to his antagonists. The competition that raged between
McCormick and the makers of rival machines was probably the fiercest