The North's superior manpower was critical to Union victory. Sales and distribution of McCormick's equipment increased further during the 1850s as Chicago became a center for the nation's then-expanding rail system.īecause the reaper replaced as many as eight to ten workers, many historians believe the invention played an important role in the outcome of the American Civil War (1861 –1865): Farmers in the North had more widely adopted the machinery, allowing more farmhands to go into battle while wheat production continued. wheat-flour consumption reached 205 pounds per capita, up from 170 pounds in 1830. As production continued to rise, consumption kept pace: In 1850, for example, U.S. Largest farm implement factory in the world. Within five years McCormick's business became the In 1847 he moved his business to Chicago, the heart of the expanding Midwestern farm market, where he could transport his machines via the Great Lakes and connected waterways to the East and to the South. McCormick's reaper was soon in wide use, and the inventor was on his way to becoming an industrialist. The device increased average production from two or three acres a day to ten acres a day. It worked in this way: a straight blade (protected by guards) was linked to a drive wheel as the drive wheel turned, the blade moved back and forth in a sawing motion, cutting through the stalks of grain, which were held straight by rods the cut grain stalks then fell onto a platform and were collected with a rake by a worker.
REAPER DEFINITION US HISTORY MANUAL
The McCormick reaper was horse-drawn and sharply reduced the amount of manual labor required to harvest grain. The first commercially successful reaper was built in 1831 by Virginia-born inventor Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809 –1884), who patented it in 1834 and first sold it in 1840 in Virginia. Reapers were machines developed in the early 1800s to help farmers harvest grain.
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