grown men in the hard
work of swinging the scythe, and so devised a harvesting-cradle, which
made the work so much easier that he was able to do his share. At the
age of twenty-two he invented a plough, which threw alternate furrows on
either side, and two years later, a self-sharpening plough, which proved
a great success.

Then he turned his attention to a mechanical reaper, though his father
warned him against wasting time and money on so impracticable a project.
But the possibility of making a machine do the hot hand-work of the
harvest field fascinated the young man, and he set to work upon the
problem. It was not an easy one, for the machine, to be successful, must
not only work in fields where the wheat stood straight, but also where
it had become tangled and beaten down by wind and rain. In 1831, he
produced his first practicable machine, making every part of it himself
by hand. Its three essential features have never been changed--a
vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the
blade, and a platform to receive the falling grain. The problem had been
solved.

Three years, however, were spent in perfecting the minor working parts,
then another was built and tested. It worked well, but McCormick was
still not satisfied with it, and not until 1840, was it perfected
sufficiently to make him willing to put it on the market. This
self-restraint was remarkable, but it had this good effect, that when
the machine was finally offered to the public, it was not an
experiment. So there were no failures, but a steady increase in demand
from the very first, until the great factory, which McCormick early
located at Chicago, now turns out nearly two hundred thousand machines a
year. The whir of these machines is heard around the world--everywhere
the McCormick reaper is doing its share toward lightening man's labor.

Another of the great victories of peace was won by Elias Howe, when, in
1844, he invented a machine which would sew. Strangely enough, he was at
first regarded as an enemy of humanity, rather than as a friend; an
enemy, especially, of the poor sewing-women who earned a pitiful living
with the needle. Few had the foresight to perceive that it was these
very women whose toil he was doing most to lighten!

Elias Howe, born in Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819, as the son of a
poor miller, and was put to work at the age of six to contribute his
mite to the support of the family. He was a frai