Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus Hall McCormick (February 15, 1809 – May 13, 1884) was an American inventor and founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which became part of International Harvester Corporation in 1902.

He was born at Walnut Grove, the McCormick family farm in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley on the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His father, the inventor Robert Hall McCormick, worked for 16 years on a horse-drawn reaper. However, he was not able to finish his project and stopped developing it. Cyrus was given the project, and developed a final version of the reaper in 6 weeks. The reaper was demonstrated in tests in 1831 and was patented by Cyrus in 1834.

In 1847, Cyrus and his brother Leander moved to Chicago, where they established large centralized works for manufacturing agricultural implements; they were joined by their brother William in 1849. The McCormick reaper sold well, partially as a result of savvy and innovative business practices. Their products came onto the market just as the development of railroads offered wide distribution to distant market areas. He developed marketing and sales techniques, developing a vast network of trained salesmen able to demonstrate operation of the machines in the field. William H. Seward said of McCormick's invention that owing to it "the line of civilization moves westward thirty miles each year." One of the the company's most famous advertisement featured an epic painting by Emanuel Leutze with the slogan, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way with McCormick Reapers in the Van”.

Numerous prizes and medals were awarded for his reaper, and he was elected a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences, "as having done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man." The invention of the reaper made farming far more efficient, and resulted in a global shift of labor from farmlands to cities.

McCormick died in Chicago, with his company passing on to his son, Cyrus McCormick, Jr.. The McCormick factories were later the site of urban labor strikes that led to the Haymarket Square riot in 1886. One of the reasons the employees were striking was because they were earning only $9 a week.

Cyrus's son Stanley McCormick (1874-1947) worked for the firm, but developed schizophrenia and retired early in 1906. His wife Katharine, a suffragette, funded Gregory Pincus's research of the first birth control pill. Cyrus McCormick's son Harold Fowler McCormick married Edith Rockefeller, youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller. He was a very active member of The Commercial Club of Chicago. He was the great uncle of Robert R. McCormick.