Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1899-03-16
The End Of the Century.

/
The world-providing Mccormick Ma
chimes approach their greatest tri-
umph at the end of the century and
this is no common century. The Pyr-
amids, the Hanging Gardens OF Baby
lon, the COLOSSUS of Rhodes, and the
rest of the seven wonders of the world
stand as monuments of the early CEN
turtles; but the Reaper. Steamboat and
Railroad are witnesses of greater
progress of this, the last and most
pregnant centuries.
The centuries that have gone before
marked progress in arts. this in sci
ences; those before in monuments TO
potentates, this in mighty inventions
to aid those whom Lincoln said God
loved the people. Men and women
who have passed a little beyond the
three score and ten look back and al
most see the beginning of the CEN
tury, when travel was mostly on foot,
when few rode in stage coaches or
on horseback, when the mail was car
ried by post boys, when newspapers
were read by tallow dips, when men
wore rude clothes spun and woven at
their own firesides and ate bread
made from grain which had been
sown broadcast by hand, threshed by
hand, and reaped by hand-when the
roads were trails and the slow prairie
schooners of the pioneers were enter
! ing the verge OF the painless west,
when farther than Missouri all was
deemed a desert and when there was
no naming the time when migration
would reach the Rockies. when the
telegraph was a tov, the telephone
not even Il dream, when iron was inn
portant, steel from England. when
the steam ship was experiment, and
when the lines of the locomotive had
never been laid.
Against this dreary beginning stands
out the luminous spectacle OF The
Changed Conditions of the End Of the
Century. The national wealth has
increased tenfold. The United States
has out-distanced all the other count
ries on the globe in comfort, luxury,
and Joyous conditions of human life.
She has more railroads than the rest
of the world She exports steel and
steel machines to England. The
mail goes by at sixty miles an hour.
We pursue our electrically printed
newspapers by electric light A net
work of roads Families this wide
country. We have spread to the
Rockies, yea to California. yea west
to the PHILIPPINES, and south to Cuba.
We are within a week from Chicago
to London and less than a day from
Chicago to New York. No person
needs to wear homespun. We con-
verse and do business a thousand
miles part. The deepest ocean car
ries our messages. The farmer sows
his wheat by machinery and reaps it
by machine which also ties knot
and accuracy and that machine is the
famous Mccormick.
The chief agent, the chief initiator,
and the chief instigator, the great
source, the fountain-head of this Won
deful progress of the century is the
Mccormick, for without the McCor-
mick the illimitabe wheat fields, the
bread bearing areas of the world
would have remained as OF yore be-
yond the grasp of man. Large areas
could be planted. but scarcity of help
hindered the harvest. The crop was
rIined by over ripeness and storms.
The area that it was possible to till
was limited. Before The invention
of the reaper, the average size of the
farms was 20 acres, and now it is
nearly $50 acres. This tells the story
of how the Mccormick strengthened
the farmer on his farm.
The reaper not merely lessened hu
man toll, but it increased the value of
every tillable acre, 1t led in the
grand march of progress. 1t gallant
ly pioneered the way for both rail
road and steamship. and then made
them profitable by its output, which
taxed their utmost carrying capac-
tiles. The the great achievements of
the century are, the railroad, the
steamship, and the reaper. The Steel
Horse and the Steel Ship have done
much but the Steel Mccormick has
done more.
For when Cyrus Mccormick design
the first practical reaper known to
the world, he made the pivot on which
swung the progressive nineteenth cen
tnry, showing more marvellous achiev-
ments in human progress than in al.
the sixty centuries preceding.
The Mccormick for the first time in
history made bread cheap in the tenn
perate regions-cheap and constant.
The Mccormick banished the fear Of
our fatbars "a MINE fines tho faar
of the failure of the harvest. This
glorious invention has doubled the
| food resources of all nations. 1t has
made possible The Agriculture Cap
ture of the Worlds Grain and Grass.
From the moment when the first Nc
Cormick machine ensured the regu
lar food supply Of man, the nations
have leapt and bounded forward on the
road of progress.
The snxoufs1nu 0f EHsarre rsrur-