So a partnership was arranged, and the new firm plunged toward
prosperity by selling $50,000 worth of reapers for the next harvest.

At last there had come a break in the clouds, and McCormick found his path
flooded with sunshine. He was no longer a wanderer in the night. He was
the Reaper King--the founder of a new dynasty. As soon as possible he
bought out Ogden, and thenceforth established a one-man business. By 1851
he was making a thousand reapers a year, and owned one-tenth of the
million dollars he had dreamed of in the Virginian wilderness.

At this point his life changes. His pioneer troubles are over. There are
no more thousand-mile rides on horseback--no more conflicts with jeering
crowds--no more smashing of reapers by farm labourers. The repeal of the
Corn Laws in England had opened up a new market for our wheat, and the
discovery of gold in California was booming the reaper business by making
money plentiful and labour scarce.

Suddenly, McCormick looked up from his work in the factory, and saw that
he was not only rich, but famous. One of his reapers had taken the Grand
Prize at a World's Fair in England. Even the London _Times_, which had
first ridiculed his reaper as "a cross between an Astley chariot, a
wheelbarrow and a flying machine," was obliged to admit, several days
later, that "the McCormick reaper is worth the whole cost of the
Exposition."

Seventeen years later, on the imperial farm, near Paris, Napoleon III.
descended from his carriage and fastened the Cross of the Legion of Honour
upon McCormick's coat. There was a picture that some American-souled
artist, when we have one, will delight to put on canvas. How splendid was
the contrast, and how significant of the New Age of Democracy, between the
suave and feeble Emperor, enjoying the sunset rays of his inherited glory,
and the strong-faced, rough-handed Virginian farmer, who had built up a
new empire of commerce that will last as long as the human race eats
bread!

From first to last, the stout-hearted old Reaper King received no favours
from Congress or the Patent Office. He built up his stupendous business
without a land grant or a protective tariff. By the time that his Chicago
factory was ten years old, he had sold 23,000 reapers, and cleared a
profit of nearly $1,300,00. The dream of his youth had been realised, and
more. All told, in 1859, there were 50,000 reapers in the United States,
doing the work of 350,000 men, saving $4,000,