erfully made," were sold in 1843, and fifty in 1844.
There were troubles, of course. Some buyers failed to pay. A workman who
was sent out on horseback to collect $300, ran away with horse, money and
all. But none of these things moved Cyrus. At last, after thirteen years
of delay, he was selling reapers.

Best of all, an order for eight had come from Cincinnati. These were the
first reapers that were sold outside of Virginia. They were seen by the
more enterprising farmers of Ohio and created a sensation wherever they
were used. Cyrus, who was now a powerful, broad-chested man of thirty-six,
caught a glimpse of his opportunity and sprang to seize it. He saw that
the time had come to leave the backwoods farm--forty miles from a
blacksmith--sixty miles from a canal--one hundred miles from a railway.
So, with $300 in his belt, he set out on horseback for the West.

Here he saw _the prairies_. To a man who had spent his life in a hollow of
the Alleghanies, the West was a new world. It was the natural home of the
reaper. The farmers of Virginia might continue forever to harvest their
small, hilly fields by hand, but here--in this vast land ocean, with few
labourers and an infinity of acres, the reaper was as indispensable as the
plough. To reap even one of these new States by hand would require the
whole working population of the country.

Also, in Illinois, McCormick saw what made his Scotch heart turn cold
within him--he saw hogs and cattle feeding in the autumn wheat-fields,
which could not be reaped for lack of labourers. Five million bushels of
wheat had grown and ripened--enough to empty the horn of plenty into every
farmer's home. Men and women, children and grandmothers, toiled day and
night to gather in the yellow food. But the short harvest-season rushed
past so quickly that tons of it lay rotting under the hoofs of cattle.

It was a puzzling problem. It was too much prosperity--a new trouble for
farmers. In Europe, men had been plenty and acres scarce. Here, acres were
plenty and men scarce. Ripe grain--the same in all countries, will not
wait. Unless it is gathered quickly--in from four to ten days, it breaks
down and decays. So, even to the dullest minds, it was clear that there
must be some better way of snatching in the ripened grain.

The sight of the trampled wheat goaded McCormick almost into a frenzy of
activity. He rode on horseback through Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri,
Ohio, and New York, proclaimin