fixed to the machine upon which two men stood. As the grain came upon
this moving platform these men seized it, bound it into sheaves, and
threw it upon the field. Simple as this procedure seemed it really
worked a revolution in agriculture; for the first time since the
pronouncement of the primal curse, the farmer abandoned his hunchback
attitude and did his work standing erect. Yet this device also had
its disqualifications, the chief one being that it converted the human
sheaf-binder into a sweat-shop worker. It was necessary to bind the
grain as rapidly as the platform brought it up; the worker was
therefore kept in constant motion; and the consequences were frequently
distressing and nerve racking. Yet this "Marsh Harvester" remained the
great favorite with farmers from about 1860 to 1874.

All this time, however, there was a growing feeling that even the Marsh
harvester did not represent the final solution of the problem; the air
was full of talk and prophecies about self-binders, something that would
take the loose wheat from the platform and transform it into sheaves.
Hundreds of attempts failed until, in 1874, Charles B. Withington of
Janesville, Wisconsin, brought to McCormick a mechanism composed of two
steel arms which seized the grain, twisted a wire around it, cut the
wire, and tossed the completed sheaf to the earth. In actual practice
this contrivance worked with the utmost precision. Finally American
farmers had a machine that cut the grain, raked it up, and bound it
into sheaves ready for the mill. Human labor had apparently lost its
usefulness; a solitary man or woman, perched upon a seat and driving a
pair of horses, now performed all these operations of husbandry.

By this time, scores of manufacturers had entered the field in
opposition to McCormick, but his acquisition of Withington's invention
had apparently made his position secure. Indeed, for the next ten years
he had everything his own way. Then suddenly an ex-keeper of a drygoods
store in Maine crossed his path. This was William Deering, a character
quite as energetic, forceful, and pugnacious as was McCormick himself.
Though McCormick had made and sold thousands of his selfbinders, farmers
were already showing signs of discontent. The wire proved a continual
annoyance. It mingled with the straw and killed the cattle--at least so
the farmers complained; it cut their hands and even found its way, with
disastrous results, into the flour mill