ward, the Prince Consort of England,
at a World's Fair in London in 1851.

There had been reapers invented in England before this date, but none of
them would reap. All the inventors were mere theorists. They designed
their reapers for ideal grain in ideal fields. One of them was a preacher,
the Rev. Patrick Bell; another, Henry Ogle, was a school-teacher. James
Dobbs, an actor, invented a machine that cut artificial grain on the
stage. And a machinist named Gladstone made a reaper that also worked well
until he tried it on real grain in a real field.

But the exhibition of the American reaper in London did not result in its
immediate adoption. There was little demand for harvesters in England
fifty years ago; and in other European countries there was none at all.
Farm labour was cheap--forty cents a day in England and five cents a day
in Russia; and the rush of labourers into factory cities had not yet
begun.

In the years following 1851, the American reaper did, however, become
popular among the very rich. It became the toy of kings and titled
landowners. By 1864 Europe was buying our farm machinery to the extent of
$600,000. This was less than she buys to-day in a week; but it was a
beginning. Several foreign manufacturers began at this time to make
reapers, notably in Toronto, Sheffield, Paris, and Hamburg. This
competition spurred on the American reaper agents, who were already taking
advantage of the interest shown by royalty in the American reaper. And
from the close of the Civil War on, there was an exciting race, generally
neck and neck, between Cyrus H. McCormick, Sr., and Walter A. Wood, to see
who could vanquish the most of these foreign imitators, and bag the
greatest number of kings and nobilities.

It was a contest that not only resulted in the triumph of the American
reaper, but also brought the Reaper Kings recognition and reputation
abroad. In 1867 both McCormick and Wood were decorated with the Cross of
the Legion of Honour by Napoleon III.; and later they stood side by side
to receive the Imperial Cross from the hand of the Austrian emperor.
Hundreds of medals and honours were showered upon these two inventor
mechanics; and the French Academy of Science, in a blaze of Gallic
enthusiasm, elected McCormick one of its members, because he had "done
more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man."

Many and strange were the exploits of the American Reaper Kings at the
courts and royal fa