In 1834 the reaper was patented. It was shown at the World's Fair in London in 1851. It won a prize as the most valuable thing in the whole fair. [Illustration: THE FIRST MᶜCORMICK REAPER _After a model of the original reaper_] Cyrus H. McCormick started to manufacture his machine at Chicago in 1847. The demand for reapers grew rapidly. When the Civil War called out one man in three from the North, there were enough reapers in use to equal the labor of one million slaves. The North not only fed itself but sent great quantities of grain to England. Cyrus McCormick's great invention did much to help the North abolish slavery. [Illustration: HARVESTING WITH MODERN MACHINERY] =139. Reapers for the West.= The invention of the reaper made it possible for the West to be quickly settled. Before, farmers raised only the few acres they could be sure of harvesting. Grain is lost, if not cut a few days after it is ripe. The wide prairies of the West could not be harvested by the old methods. Now on these great plains huge reapers drawn by engines sometimes cut forty-eight feet of grain in a single swathe. Because of the labor it saves, McCormick's invention has made the cost of bread low for millions of people. With hand-reaping half the people of the country would be busy producing nothing but bread. In the past most nations were never free from the danger of starvation. Now the world produces enough for all. A noted French society, when it elected McCormick a member, said that he had "done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man." ELIAS HOWE, INVENTOR OF THE SEWING MACHINE =140. A Time-Saving Invention.= Elias Howe was a poor boy who won great riches through his invention, but spent most of his years in a long, dreary struggle with poverty. [Illustration: ELIAS HOWE] Elias was born in Massachusetts in 1819. His father was a poor man. He worked in his father's mill and then in the cotton mills of New England until he came to have a thorough knowledge of machinery. When he was twenty-four he began his great invention, the sewing machine. Sewing machines using a chain stitch had already been invented in England and France, but a chain stitch ravels easily. Howe invented a lock stitch machine. Like earlier machines, it had a needle with an eye in its point to bring a loop of thread through the cloth. In chain stitching the needle at the next stitch passes through this loop. Howe instead passed a shuttle carrying a second thread through the loop. This made a firm lock stitch. [Illustration: HOWE'S FIRST SEWING MACHINE] Howe tried to get tailors to buy his machine. He proved that it would sew seven times as fast as the best needleworkers. But they were afraid it would take work away from their men, and would have nothing to do with it. After patenting his machine, Howe took it to England, but there he remained as poor and unknown as before.