erican--to be fond of
work for work's sake. And of all their drudgery, the everlasting stooping
over bundles to bind them into sheaves galled them most. Such
back-breaking toil, they thought, might be well enough for kangaroos, but
it certainly was not suitable for an erect biped, like man.

"If I didn't have to walk from bundle to bundle, and hump myself like a
horseshoe, I could do twice as much work," said one of the brothers.

"Well," said the other, "why can't we fix a platform on the reaper, and
have the grain carried up to us?"

It was a brilliant idea and a new one. Neither of the young fellows had
ever seen a reaper factory; but they were handy and self-reliant. By the
next autumn they were in the field with their new machine, and as they had
expected, they bound the grain twice as quickly as they had the year
before.

So was born the famous Marsh harvester, which proved to be the half-way
mark in the evolution of the grain-reaping machine. It was the child of
the reaper and the parent of the self-binder. It cut in two the cost of
binding grain. But it did more than this--it gave the farmer his first
chance to stand erect, and forced him to be quick, for the two men who
stood on the harvester were compelled to bind the grain as fast as it was
cut. Thus it introduced the factory system, one might say, into the
harvest-field. For the first time the Big Minute made its appearance on
the farm.

The Marsh boys, never dreaming that they had helped to change the
destinies of nations, took out a flimsy patent on their invention, and
went on with their farm work. Two summers later, as they were at work with
it, their home-made harvester broke down. A farmer from Plano, near
DeKalb, named Lewis Steward, was riding by. He stopped, and, being a man
of unusual abilities and discernment, he at once saw the value of the
Marsh machine, even in its disabled state.

"Boys, you're on the right track," he said. "If you can run your machine
ten rods, it can be made to run ten miles. It is superior to anything now
in use."

Thus cheered, the Marsh brothers went to Plano, arranged a partnership
with a clever mechanic named John F. Hollister, and began to make
harvesters for sale. To their surprise the new machine was not welcomed.
It was received with an almost unanimous roar of disapproval. It was a
"man-killer," said the farmers. Now, the Marsh brothers were quick,
nervous men, and they had built a machine to suit themselve