Traveling to a world’s fair in London McCormick had the chance to demonstrate his product alongside a competitor: his product worked, the other failed. His sales strategy helped McCormick overcome the challenges posed by a number of similar products then hitting markets. In McCormick’s day they seemed almost radical. Today these sorts of sales practices are common. He also provided a full money-back guarantee if the product did not meet expectations. But he also allowed farmers to purchase the equipment on an installment plan and even offered extensions for tough seasons. He sold his reapers for $120, no haggling or negotiating. McCormick rode the wave and stayed atop by a series of smart business decisions. The abundance of the farms produced profits not only for the farmers who could now bring in record crops, but also for the railroads which shipped the grain to markets, the elevators and warehouses which stored it, and, of course, the farm implement manufacturer who produced the machines that were playing such an important part in feeding a fast-growing state and nation. ![]() By then Chicago had deposed a pair of port cities near the Russian steppes to become the leading grain port on Earth. The results were clear: Illinois became the nation’s leading grain-producing state by the outbreak of the Civil War. On average it could cut down about 1.5 acres per hour or 10 acres in a day, about five times more than a person on foot could do. In a short time McCormick’s Reaper Works were among the city’s largest employers, with 120 workers. “Shafts plunge, cylinders revolve, bellows heave, iron is twisted into screws like wax, and saws dash off at a rate of forty pounds a second, at one movement of its mighty muscles,” he wrote. A writer for the Chicago Daily Journal was awestruck by the impressive new machinery in the factory. He built a four-story factory in Chicago for the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. McCormick had the answer and he set to work immediately. Some farmers who could not bring in their full crop before it spoiled would let their livestock loose into their fields to eat the unharvested grain before it went bad. The labor-intensive planting had been made easier, but the labor-intensive harvesting had not. Having plowed and planted more land, farmers now had to solve the problem of how to harvest this much larger bounty. John Deere had recently started producing steel plows in northwestern Illinois, allowing farmers in the Midwest to plow up more land and plant more crops. Though he might not have known it, McCormick’s invention would be the second part of a one-two punch through Illinois which was changing the face of farming forever. The proximity of the lake would give him just the transportation link he needed to obtain the raw materials for his products, and the railroads which even then were beginning to reach out toward the vast wheat fields of the Great Plains would help him deliver his finished products to the farmers who he hoped would buy them.Ĭonstruction on the first McCormick Reaper Works began on the banks of the Chicago River in 1847. He saw something in the lakeside metropolis that made it a more attractive option than other cities. Demand soon expanded beyond what his workshop could accommodate and McCormick started looking for a place to build a factory.Įven though other Midwestern cities were larger and businesses seemed to be booming there, McCormick chose Chicago. But in 1842 word of his apparatus spread to the vast farm country west of the Appalachians and orders started pouring in. As it moved across the field, its steel blade chopped down wheat stalks and the farmer collected the grain. In 1834 he got his first patent for a mechanical reaper, a machine which was pulled through the field by a horse while the human operator walked alongside. ![]() In the early 1830s Cyrus McCormick started tinkering with a machine that he thought would make harvesting much less labor intensive. It was this meeting of geography and infrastructure which brought to Illinois an inventor who believed he could revolutionize farming with a contraption which came to be known as “The Mechanical Man.” ![]() Our state happens to sit atop some of the most fertile farmland in the entire world and the development of the nation’s transportation infrastructure put us right at the crossroads of the continent. ![]() Geography plays an important part in that history. Agriculture built Illinois whether it is the small family farmer, the truck driver who delivers their products, the tractor factory employee or those who work at the Chicago Board of Trade, agriculture touches every part of Illinois’ economy and remains the state’s largest industry. Illinois is many things, but first and foremost we are an agricultural state.
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