The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1931-03-31
MCCORMICK HONORED
). AT LOCAL BANQUET
Inventor Of Reaper Eulogized at
Dinner Monday Night; 1876
in Attendance

Approximately 1876 members of the
International Harvester company
family and their guests participated
in the celebration Monday evening OF
the centennial anniversary OF the
reaper by Cyrus H. McCormick.
founder Of the company and n OF
the great inventors and industrial
Leaders Of America.
Similar celebrations either nave
been held or will be held soon IN oth.
er places in America and throughout
the world, j. G. Taylor, local man
aver for the company, told the as
semblage.
Preceding the dinner, q motion
picture depicting the invention ano
development Of the reaper, from tne
first crude machine to the gigantlc
Observation-Disclosures Of today was
shown at the Capitol Theater. ~
told. more clearly than words couio
do. the story Of an American epic.
At the beginning were men reap
ing grain with the sickle. when II re-
ouired q day of hard work to cut an
acre of wheat. At the end was q PIC
ture showing q score OF
cutting wide swaths through q 81
eantic wheat field. In between Were
other pictures, showing the use OF
the cradle, the first rude reapers, lat
ar improvements in the shape OF 9
self-raking reaper and wire ana
Irvine binders, and finally the trac-
tor-drawn binder and the combine.
Running through the picture was
the story of how Cyrus H. McCor-
mick, a Virginia youth OF ~ years
labored to perfect q winch
was to become the foundation O one
CT Americas great family fortunes.
Mccormick, as an inventor and
business leader, was eulogized at the
dinner in the Patterson Hotel Ter
race Garden by Governor George +.
Shafer, Chief Justice A. M. CnriSt.
hanson of the state supreme court n
Congressman Thomas Hall.
Each recalled their own experiences
on the farm before machinery came
into general use to tighten the Dur
dens of those who till the soil and
increase the productiveness OF the In
dividual.
Governor Shafer said the reaper.
as the %forerunner OF mecnanizeo
agriculture, had conferred great bless
inps on the human race at the same
time that 1t created new problems
The necessity that everything be
done by hand labor, he said. kept the
human race in constant want OF 1000
or in constant fear of want. Famine
threatened continually. he asserted.
and the development Of civilization
was hampered.
In strong contrast to this picture,
he said, is the present-day situation
when mechanical agriculture makes
possible greater production than the
world can use.
Judge Christianson, reviewing the
life of Cyrus H. Mccormick, pointed
out that the commercial development
OF the reaper was an indirect result
of an adversely which came upon the
inventor. When he and his father
went bankrupt in the iron and fourl-
dry business, Judge ChriStianSon said,
his creditors took everything except
the reaper patent and rejected that
because they regarded it as worthless
Young Mccormick, however, con-
centrated upon developing it CONNER
cially and, because of constant i'm
provement and sound business man
agement, made 1t the basis of one OF
the worlds great businesses.
The problems created by mechanic
ed agriculture, Judge Christensen
said, are problems Of plenty rather
than those of want and privation
which faced the world a hundred
years ago. He said the human race
should find them easier of solution
than the more pressing problems OF
q century back.
Taylor, who presided at the BAN
quet, summed up the progress of a
century when he stated that 100
years ago it required approximately
so hours of human labor to reap and
thresh an acre Of grain. Now, with
a harvester thresher, it requires only
As minutes.