That ingenuity gave birth to a business, as blacksmith became manufacturer. Steel was rare on the prairie, and John Deere’s adaptation of a steel saw blade, properly shaped to shed the thick soil found in the Midwest, contributed to its success,” says Neil Dahlstrom, manager of Corporate Archives & History at John Deere. “Deere’s plow was innovative in two ways: the shape and the material. Working in his shop in Grand Detour, Deere adapted a broken saw blade to create a tool made for the Midwest. Farmers were forced to continually stop and scrape the tool clean while they worked. Rockefeller, the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, along with other Harvester Trusts, merged together to become the International Harvester Company, which remained a key player in Chicago manufacturing for more than 70 years.Īs a testament to the practical design of the McCormick reaper, today’s wheat cutting equipment remains similar to the original machine that changed the world.Īround 1837 when the McCormick family was perfecting its revolutionary reaper, blacksmith John Deere proved the adage “necessity is the mother of invention.”ĭesigned for use in the sandy soil of eastern states, the wood and cast-iron plows used by Illinois farmers at the time proved no match for the Midwest’s rich, thick soil. “Chicago was at the center of this transformation, developing a grain elevator system that was the most important advancement in the history of the world’s grain trade.” “The reaper was the base for the 19th-century revolution in cereal production that led to a complete change in the techniques of moving, storing and trading grain,” McCormick says. While creating a new generation of consumers, machines like the reaper helped establish Chicago as a bustling center of agriculture. “The reaper helped people get off farms and into cities and gave them disposable income to buy things at Sears or Montgomery Ward,” McCormick says. The arrival of the reaper allowed farm workers to migrate from farm to factory and paved the way for western expansion. It really was a family affair.”īefore long, McCormick Reaper Works ranked among the country’s largest manufacturing operations, producing nearly one-half of the world’s farm machinery. “Cyrus’ brothers were instrumental, but they don’t get as much credit. Brother William was very much the operations guy and Leander the leading engineer,” says McCormick, who likens the brothers to the Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of their day. Setting up shop on Pine Street (better known today as Michigan Avenue), the McCormick brothers began mass production in 1848 with Cyrus at the helm.Ī marketing genius, Cyrus McCormick pioneered innovative business practices that became modern-day standards – from payment plans to field trials and product guarantees. Still, slave labor and uneven terrain squashed sales of the clever contraption in the breadbasket of the South.ĭrawn by the Midwest’s abundance and easy access to river and rail transportation, Cyrus left Virginia for Chicago in 1847. The McCormicks’ remarkable reaper performed the backbreaking work of three men in a fraction of the time. “Really, it was the father – Robert Hall McCormick – who originally built the reaper in 1832, and Cyrus took it to the next level in collaboration with his brothers.”Īssisted by Joe Anderson, one of the family’s slaves, Cyrus perfected a practical horse-drawn model that promised to end centuries of harvesting by hand. They made all sorts of blacksmith tools and farming contraptions at their bucolic farm, Walnut Grove, under the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia,” says Sargent McCormick, who shares their family tree. “The McCormicks were a very inventive family. Though oldest son Cyrus became the face of the revolutionary reaper, the wheat harvesting machine represents a family affair. Joining the likes of Lincoln, Illinois transplants Cyrus McCormick and John Deere became household names with their game-changing ingenuity. Now in its 200th year, the Land of Lincoln’s long legacy includes early innovators who lightened the load for generations of farmers and paved the way for the Industrial Age.
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