CHINE IN ENGLAND

[Sidenote: An Unfair Disadvantage]

"In presenting the following pages for consideration of the farmers of
the country, the subscriber has confined himself strictly to matters
selected from English papers, which will speak for itself. As a short
explanation from me will be looked for, I will merely state that at the
trial in presence of the Exhibition Jury, Mr. McCormick's machine was
operated by an experienced hand sent from the United States, while mine
was managed by English laborers of the lower class, who were total
strangers to it, and had never seen it in operation. The trial was made
in unripe wheat on a rainy day. My machine was very improperly adjusted
for the work and wrongly put together, in consequence of which the
ignorant raker failed to deliver the sheaves, and it stopped as a matter
of course, and was immediately laid aside, after cutting but a few feet.
My machine was never tried in presence of that Jury by any other hands,
or in any other condition, myself not being in England.

"It was on such a trial that the Exhibition medal was disposed of, and
with what justice the reader can judge by reading the following pages. On
my arrival in England I took my machine into the field that it might work
its way into public favor as it best could. After being exhibited in
several places, its rising fame appeared to produce some effect, as it
will appear by the following in the _Windsor and Eaton Express_ of
November 8, 1851:

"Alluding to the astonishing and unexpected performance of my Reaper, it
says: '_By this unlooked for turn of events, the proprietors of
McCormick's machine found that their supremacy was no longer undisputed,
and that the necessity was laid upon them to look to their laurels; they
therefore came boldly forward, and threw down the gauntlet!_'

[Illustration: Hussey's Side-Delivery Reaper As Used in England. (From An
Old Print)]

[Sidenote: How McCormick Received a Medal]

"That farmers who are acquainted with my reaper may understand why it
failed to perform well in the hands of strangers at the Exhibition trial
where McCormick got the medal, it will be necessary for me to say that
when the machine was sent from Baltimore it was set to cut high. That
when the inexperienced hands undertook to make it cut low, they pitched
down the cutters by putting on the tongue, not knowing any other way to
lower it. In doing so the hind part of the platform was of course raised
h