Cyrus Hall McCormick Part 8

What McCormick tried to do as a citizen and a patriot was the one heroic failure of his life. He ran for office on several occasions, but he was never elected. He was not the sort of man who gets elected. He stood for his whole party at a time when the average politician was standing only for himself. He talked of "fundamental principles" while the other leaders, for the most part, were thinking of salaries. He gave up his time and his money as freely for politics as he did for religion; but he was out of his element. He was too sincere, too simple, too intent upon a larger view of public questions. He could never talk the flexible language of diplomacy nor suit his theme to the prejudice of his listeners. Usually, to the political managers and delegates with whom he felt it his duty to co-operate, he was like a man from another world.

They could never understand him, and tolerated his leaders.h.i.+p mainly because of his generous contributions. Again and again he astonished them by developing a party speech into a sermon on national righteousness, or by speaking n.o.bly of a political opponent. On one memorable occasion, for instance, in the white-hot pa.s.sion of the Hayes-Tilden controversy, and after he had lavished time and money in support of Tilden, he sprang to his feet in a Democratic convention and amazed the delegates by saying: "Mr. Hayes is not a Democrat, but he is too patriotic and honest to suit his party managers and we must sustain him so far as he is right."

He was one of the first Americans who rose above sectional interests and party loyalties, and surveyed his country as a whole. No other man of his day, either in or out of public office, was so free from local prejudices and so intensely national in his beliefs and sympathies. He refused to stamp himself with the label of the North or of the South. He had been reared in the one and matured in the other. And in the ominous days before the Civil War he strove like a beneficent giant to make the wrangling partisans listen to the voice of reason and arbitration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE REAPER IN HEAVY GRAIN]

He went to the Democratic Convention at Baltimore, just before the war, and set before the Southerners the standpoint of the North. Then he bought a daily paper--_The Times_--to explain to Chicago the standpoint of the South. He wrote editorials. He made speeches. He poured into the newspapers, day after day for two years, a large share of the profits that he derived from his Reaper. He was no more popular as an editor than as a political candidate. He was a maker, not a collector, of public opinion; and instead of pandering to the war frenzy, he opposed it,--put his newspaper squarely in its path, and held it there until the feet of the crowd had trampled it into an impossible wreck.

He was so strong, so indomitable, this heir of the Covenanters, that when the war had openly begun, he strode between the North and South and labored like a t.i.tan to bring them to a reconciliation. He actually believed that he could establish peace. He proposed a plan. Horace Greeley indorsed it, and the two men, who were throughout life the closest of comrades, undertook to bring the severed nation back to union and the paths of law.

The "McCormick Plan," in a word was to call immediately two conventions--one to represent the Democrats of the North and the other the Democrats of the South. These conventions would elect delegates to a board of arbitration, which would consider the various causes of the war and arrange a just basis upon which both sides could agree to disband their armies and reestablish peace.

After the war, too, almost before the nation had finished counting its dead, it was Cyrus H. McCormick whose voice was first heard in favor of church unity. Among the many speeches and letters of his which have been preserved, the most beautifully phrased paragraph is the ending of an article that he published in 1869, protesting against the invasion of political partisanism into the religious life.

"When are we to look for the return of brotherly love and Christian fellows.h.i.+p," he asked, "so long as those who aspire to fill the high places of the church indulge in such wrath and bitterness? Now that the great conflict of the Civil War is past, and its issues settled, religion and patriotism alike require the exercise of mutual forbearance, and the pursuit of those things which tend to peace."

For the mere game of party politics Mr. McCormick cared little or nothing. It was all as irksome to him as the task of governing Geneva was to John Calvin; but he could not help himself. His political convictions were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. They were racial traits which his forefathers and foremothers had spent at least three centuries in developing.

On one occasion Dr. John Hall of New York, seeing how Mr. McCormick was worried by political obligations, said to him:

"Why do you plague yourself with these uncongenial things? What glory can you hope to get from politics that will add to what you now possess as the inventor of the Reaper?"

"Dr. Hall," replied Mr. McCormick, "I am in politics because I cannot help it. There are certain principles that I have got to stand by, and I am obliged to go into politics to defend them."

The form of Mr. McCormick's religious faith had been forged by such preacher-patriots as John Knox and Andrew Melville; and he, like them, found it as imperative upon his conscience to fight for both civil and religious liberty. With his whole heart he believed in American inst.i.tutions as they had been established by the nation-builders of 1776. He did not want the Const.i.tution to be ignored by Federal reformers, nor the Union to be broken by secession. He was by temperament and tradition a conservative, and opposed especially to all extreme measures and sectional innovations. As he had adapted his Reaper so that it would cut grain in all States, he could never see why political policies, too, should not be lifted above the limitations of geography and made to conserve the welfare of the whole people. As he said on one strenuous occasion when laboring mightily to beat back the extremists in his own party: "Is not every government on the face of the earth established upon the principle of compromise?"

To special privileges of every sort he was unalterably opposed. He asked for none for himself--no favoring tariff or grant of public land or monopolistic franchise. "I have been throughout my life," he said, "opposed to all measures which tend to raise one cla.s.s of the American people upon the ruin of others, or one section of our common country at the expense of another. The country is the common property of all parties, and all are interested in its prosperity."

All this shows the heroic side of McCormick; but he was not always heroic. He was a giant, but a most human and simple-natured giant.

Strange as it may sound to those who knew him only with his armor on, it is true that he could be tender or humorous. There were tears and laughter in him. There was no cruelty in his strength and no revenge in his aggressiveness. He was a big, red-blooded, great-hearted man, who might to-day be threatening to cane a politician who had deceived him, and to-morrow be playing with his younger children and letting their two pet squirrels, Zip and Zoe, chase each other around his shoulders.

He was fond of power, not because of its privileges and exemptions, but because it furthered the work that he had in hand. He was often surrounded by sycophants--by men who said yes to his yes and no to his no; and while he accepted this homage with a certain degree of satisfaction, he was not deceived by it. On one occasion, when he was attending the Democratic Convention at Cincinnati--the convention that nominated Hanc.o.c.k as candidate for President,--he was beset by a court of flatterers and lip-servers. After it was over, he remarked simply to his valet, "Well, Charlie, there is a lot of farce and humbug about this."

Dr. Francis L. Patton, who was for years the president of Princeton University and also at one time editor of _The Interior_, was especially impressed with this direct naturalness of McCormick. "One meets with all sorts of men in the course of a lifetime," said Dr. Patton. "There are patronizing men, pompous men, men who habitually wear a mask of seriousness, men who clothe themselves with dignity as with a coat of mail lest you should presume too much or go too far, men whose position is never defined, and double-minded men with whom you never feel yourself safe. But Mr. McCormick was not like one of these. There is that in the possession of power which always tends to make men imperious. I do not mean to imply that he was altogether free from this tendency, for he was not. But he was approachable, companionable, and ready to hear what I had to say. He was not one of those men who are so uninterestingly self-controlled as to be always the same. There were times when his mirth was contagious and times when his wrath was kindled a little. We did not always agree, and sometimes we both grew hot in argument; but at the end his cheery laugh proclaimed the fact that our differences had only been the free and easy give-and-take of friends.h.i.+p."

To see McCormick laugh was a spectacle. There was first a mellowing of his usual Jovian manner. His gray-brown eyes twinkled. The tense lines of his face relaxed. Then came a smile and soon a burst of laughter, shaking his powerful body and putting the whole company for the time into an uproar of merriment. It was the triumph of the genial and magnetic side of his nature--the side that was ordinarily repressed by the pressure of his big affairs.

McCormick had humor, but not wit. His jokes were simple and old-fas.h.i.+oned, such as Luther and Cromwell would have laughed at. There was no innuendo and no cynicism. On one occasion two small urchins knocked at the door and asked for food. McCormick heard their voices and had them brought into the sitting-room, where he happened to be in consultation with his lawyer. "Now," said he to the youngsters, "we are going to put both of you on trial. I will be the judge and this gentleman will be the prosecutor." Each boy in turn was placed on the witness-stand, and plied with questions. It was soon clear that neither of them was telling the truth, so "Judge" McCormick took them in hand and gave them a serious talk on the folly and wickedness of lying. Then he gave them twenty-five cents apiece, and sent them down to the kitchen to eat as much supper as they could hold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARVESTING NEAR SPOKANE, WAs.h.i.+NGTON]

At another time a very dignified and self-centred military officer was taking supper with the McCormick family. The first course, as usual, was corn-meal mush and milk. This was served in Scotch fas.h.i.+on, with the hot mush in one bowl and the cold milk in another, and the practice was to so co-ordinate the eating of these that both were finished at the same time. The officer planned his spoonfuls badly, and was soon out of milk. "Have some more milk to finish your mush, Colonel," said McCormick. Several minutes later the Colonel's mush bowl was empty, at which McCormick said, "Have some more mush to finish your milk." And so it went, with milk for the mush and mush for the milk, until the unfortunate Colonel was hopelessly incapacitated for the four or five courses that came afterwards.

McCormick was not by any means a teller of stories, but he had a few simple and well-worn anecdotes that appealed so strongly to his sense of humor that he told and re-told them many times. There was the story of the man who stole the pound of b.u.t.ter and hid it in his hat, and how the grocer saw him and kept talking in the store, beside a hot stove, until the b.u.t.ter melted and exposed the man's thievery. Another favorite story was about the pig that found its way into a garden by walking through a hollow log, and how the gardener fooled the pig by placing the hollow log in such a way that both ends of it were on the outside of the garden.

Even McCormick's jokes had a certain moral tang--a flavor of the first Psalm and the eighth chapter of Romans. They were apt to deal with the troubles of the unG.o.dly who had been caught in their wickedness. There were times, too, when his sense of humor and his sense of justice would co-operate in odd ways. Once, when a roast game bird, which had been sent to him as a gift from the hunter, was left over from supper, he ordered that his dainty be kept and served for the next day's luncheon.

At luncheon the next day it did not appear. On asking for the game bird, a roast chicken was set before him, and he at once noticed that it was not the same bird which he had ordered to be kept. He questioned the butler, who protested that it was the same. After the meal McCormick ordered that the servants involved should be called into the dining-room. From them, by a series of questions, he soon obtained the truth and proved the butler to be the culprit. The one thing that he would tolerate least was a lie. As he would say at times, "A thief you can watch, but I detest a liar."

There were very few who had the temerity to play a practical joke upon the great inventor himself. His two youngest sons, Harold and Stanley, would hide in the hallway when they saw him approaching, and pounce out upon him with wild yells in small-boy fas.h.i.+on, but they were both privileged people.

McCormick was a most hearty and hospitable man. He was an ideal person for such a life-work--the abolition of famine. He was fond of food and plenty of it. He loved to see a big table heaped with food. The idea of hunger was intolerable to him. He might well have been posing for a statue of the deity of Plenty, as he squared himself around to the long, family dinner-table, with his napkin worn high and caught at his shoulders by a white silk band that went around his neck, and with a complacent, "Now, then," plunged the carving-fork into a crisp and fragrant fowl that lay on the platter in front of him.

The fact that McCormick seldom made a social call was not due to his own choosing, but because of the many worries and compulsions of his life.

Once, when confiding in an intimate friend, he said, "It pains me very much to think how little I am known by my neighbors, but I seem to be always too busy to meet them." He was not at all, as many have thought because of his strenuous life, a man of harsh and rough exterior. There was nothing rough about him except his strength. He was irreproachable in dress and personal appearance. He did not drink, smoke, nor swear.

And his manners and language, on formal occasions, were those of a dignified gentleman of the old school--a Calhoun, or a Van Buren.

He was not a hard-natured man, except when he was battling for his rights and his principles. He would often turn from an overwhelming ma.s.s of business to play with one of his children. He was as ready to forgive as he was to fight. He never cherished resentments or personal grudges.

He knew that life was a conflict of interests and policies; and when he forgave, his forgiveness was free and full, and not a formal ceremony.

It was as honest and as spontaneous as his wrath. He was one of the few men who could freely pray, "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive those who trespa.s.s against us."

His fame and honors and intimacies with people of rank never made him less democratic in his sympathies. He always had a profound respect for the man or woman who did useful work, if the work was done well. Once, when a poor woman went to him for advice about some trifling thing that she had invented, he turned from his work and explained to her, with the utmost patience and courtesy, the things that she wished to know. With his trusted employees, too, he was usually kindly and sometimes jovial.

"I had only one brush with him in thirty-five years," said one of his cas.h.i.+ers. "The last time that I saw him, he met me on the street and said, 'h.e.l.lo, Sellick, have you got lots of money? Can you give me a hundred thousand dollars to-day?' 'Yes, sir,' I answered. 'Well, I'm glad I don't need it,' he said with a laugh."

The loyalty of his workmen and his agents was always a source of pride to McCormick. It was one of the favorite topics of his conversation. He would mention his men by name and tell of their exploits with the deepest satisfaction. On one occasion, when a body of agents made a united demand for higher salaries, there was one agent in Minnesota who refused to take part in the movement. "I don't want to force Mr.

McCormick," he said. "I have worked for him for nearly thirty years, and I know that he is a just man, and that he will do what is right." Not long afterwards, McCormick was told of this man's action, and he immediately showed his appreciation by making the agent a present of a carriage and fine team of horses.

There was one man who was wholly in McCormick's power--a negro named Joe, who, by the custom that prevailed in the South before the Civil War, was a slave and the property of McCormick. They were of the same age, and had played together as boys. Joe grew up to be a tall, straight, intelligent negro, and his master was very fond of him. He is mentioned frequently in McCormick's letters, usually in a considerate way. Years before the Civil War McCormick gave Joe his freedom, and some land and a good cabin. Now and then, even in the stress and strain of his business-building, he would stop to write Joe a short letter of good wishes and advice. There was no other one thing, perhaps, which proved so convincingly the essential kindliness of his nature as his treatment of Joe.

In his family relations, too, McCormick was a man of tenderness and devotion. When his father died, in 1846, he was struck down by sorrow.

"Many a sore cry have I had as I have gone around this place and found no father," he wrote to his brother William. And as soon as he was solidly established in Chicago, his first act was to send for his mother, and to give her such a royal welcome that she could hardly believe her eyes. "I feel like the Queen of Sheba," she said to her neighbors when she returned to Virginia; "the half was never told."

McCormick helped his younger brothers--William and Leander, by making them his partners. William died in 1865--a great and irreparable loss.

He was a man of careful mind and rare excellence of character, especially able in matters of detail--a point in which Cyrus McCormick was not proficient. The two men were well suited as partners. Cyrus planned the work in large outlines, and broke down the obstacles that stood in the way; while William added the details and supervised the carrying out of the plan. Leander, who also held a high place in the business in its earlier days, withdrew from it later, and died in 1900.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1883

His Last Portrait]

Until 1858 McCormick had thought himself too busy to be married. But in that year he met Miss Nettie Fowler, of New York, and changed his mind.

It was soon apparent that his marriage was not to be in any sense a hindrance to his success, but rather the wisest act of his life. Mrs.

McCormick was a woman of rare charm, and with a comprehension of business affairs that was of the greatest possible value to her husband.

She was at all times in the closest touch with his purposes. By her advice he introduced many economies at the factory, and rebuilt the works after the Great Fire of 1871. The precision of her memory, and the grasp of her mind upon the multifarious details of human nature and manufacturing, made her an ideal wife for such a man as Cyrus H.

McCormick. As he grew older, he depended upon her judgment more and more; and as Mrs. McCormick is still in the possession of health and strength, it may truly be said that for more than half a century she has been a most influential factor in the industrial and philanthropic development of the United States.

Four sons were born, and two daughters--Cyrus Hall, who is now President of the International Harvester Company; Robert, who died in infancy; Harold, Treasurer of the International Harvester Company; Stanley, Comptroller of the Company; Virginia; and Anita, now known as Mrs.

Emmons Blame.

Mr. McCormick was a most affectionate husband and father. He took the utmost delight in his home and its hospitalities; and invariably brought his whole household with him whenever the growth of his business obliged him to visit foreign countries. In the last few years of his life it gave him the most profound satisfaction to know that his oldest son would pick up the McCormick burden and carry it forward. "Cyrus is a great comfort to me," he said to an intimate friend. "He has excellent judgment in business matters, and I find myself leaning on him more and more."

The truth is that there was a tender side to McCormick's strong nature, which was not seen by those who met him only upon ordinary occasions. He was in reality a great dynamo of sentiment. He was deeply moved by music, especially by the playing of Ole Bull and the singing of Jenny Lind, who were his favorites. He was as fond of flowers as a child. "I love best the old-fas.h.i.+oned pinks," he said, "because they grew in my mother's garden in Virginia." Often the tears would come to his eyes at the sight of mountains, for they reminded him of his Virginian home.

"Oh, Charlie," he said once to his valet, as he sat crippled in a wheel-chair in a Southern hotel, "how I wish I could get on a horse and ride on through those mountains once again!"

McCormick was not in any sense a Gradgrind of commercialism--a man who enriched his coffers by the impoverishment of his soul. He made money--ten millions or more; but he did so incidentally, just as a man makes muscle by doing hard work. Several of his fellow Chicagoans had swept past him in the million-making race. No matter how much money came to him, he was the same man, with the same friends.h.i.+ps and the same purposes. And it is inconceivable that, for any amount of wealth, he would have changed the ground-plan of his life.

It is strictly true to say that he was a practical idealist. He idealized the American Const.i.tution, the Patent Office, the Courts, the Democratic Party, and the Presbyterian Church. He was an Oliver Cromwell of industry. All his beliefs and acts sprang from a few simple principles and fitted together like a picture puzzle. There was religion in his business and business in his religion. He was made such as he was by the Religious Reformation of Europe and the Industrial Revolution of the United States. He was all of one piece--sincere and self-consistent--a type of the nineteenth-century American at his best.

He was not sordid. He was not cynical. He was not scientific. He was a man of faith and works--one of the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind who laid the foundations and built the walls of this republic.

He felt that he was born into the world with certain things to do. Some of these things were profitable and some of them were not, but he gave as much energy and attention to the one as to the other. In 1859, for instance, he had a factory that was profitable, and a daily paper and a college that were expensive. He was struggling to extend his trade at home and in Europe, to protect his patents, to prevent the war between the North and South, and to maintain the simplicity of the Presbyterian faith. To contend for these interests and principles was his life. He could not have done anything else. It was as natural for him to do so as for a fish to swim or a bird to fly. Once, towards the end of his life, when he was sitting in his great arm-chair, reflecting, he said to his wife, "Nettie, life _is_ a battle." He made this announcement as though it were the discovery of a new fact. All his life he had been much less conscious of the battle itself than of the _cause_ for which he fought.