g his harvest gospel and looking for
manufacturers who would build his reapers. From shop to shop he went with
the zeal of a Savonarola.

[Illustration: A MODEL OF THE FIRST PRACTICAL REAPER]

One morning, in the little town of Brockport, New York, he found the
first practical men who appreciated his invention--Dayton S. Morgan and
William H. Seymour. Morgan was a handy young machinist who had formed a
partnership with Seymour--a prosperous store-keeper. They listened to
McCormick with great interest and agreed to make a hundred reapers. By
this decision they both later became millionaires, and also entered
history as the founders of the first reaper factory in the world.

Altogether, in the two years after he left Virginia, McCormick sold 240
reapers. This was Big Business; but it was only a morsel in proportion to
his appetite. Neither was it satisfactory. He found himself tangled in a
snarl of trouble because of bad iron, stupid workmen, and unreliable
manufacturers. He cut the Gordian knot by building a factory of his own at
Chicago.

This was one of the wisest decisions of his life, though at the time it
appeared to be a disastrous mistake. Chicago, in 1847, showed no signs of
its present greatness. As a city, it was a ten-year-old experiment, built
in a swamp, without a railway or a canal. It was ugly and dirty, with a
river that ran in the wrong direction; but it was _busy_. It was the link
between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes--a central market where wheat
was traded for lumber and furs for iron. It had no history--no ancient
families clogging up the streets with their special privileges. And best
of all, it was a place where a big new idea was actually preferred to a
small old one.

Chicago did not look at McCormick with dead eyes and demand a certified
cheque from his ancestors. It sized him up in a few swift glances and saw
a thick-set, ruddy man, with the physique of a heavy-weight wrestler, dark
hair that waved in glossy furrows, and strong eyes that struck you like a
blow. It glanced at his reaper and saw a device to produce more wheat.
More wheat meant more business, so Chicago said ----

"Glad to see you. You're the right man and you're in the right place. Come
in and get busy." William B. Ogden, the first Mayor of Chicago, listened
to his story for two minutes, then asked him how much he wanted for a half
interest. McCormick had little money and no prestige. Ogden had a surplus
of both.