Even McCormick lost heavily at first, before a truce was called in this battle of the binders. One lawsuit cost him more than $225,000 and one experiment, with what was called a "low-down" binder, cost him $80,000. He was as determined as ever not to be beaten; and although he was at this time over seventy years of age, and sorely crippled by rheumatism, he straightway entered into a trade war with Deering, which was not ended until 1902. Many of the older workmen who are now employed in the McCormick works can remember the stress and strain of those battling years, and how their indomitable old leader, at times when he was unable to walk, would have himself pushed in a wheeled chair through the various buildings of his immense plant, to make sure that every part of the great mechanism was working smoothly. Of all the competitors who had fought him in the early days, before the Civil War, there were few now remaining. Hussey, his first antagonist, had sold out to a mowing machine syndicate in 1861. Emerson, Seymour, and Morgan had decided not to make self-binders. Jerome Fassler, of Springfield, Ohio, took his fortune of two million dollars and went to New York City in 1882 with a scheme to build a subway. Manny was dead, and very few were living of those who had seen the Reaper of 1831. John P. Adriance, of Poughkeepsie, had survived. He was a gentle-natured man, who was content with a small and safe percentage of the business. Byron E. Huntley, of Batavia, had also built up a small, but solidly based, enterprise. He had been the office-boy, in 1845, in the factory where the first hundred McCormick Reapers were made; and he had been a manufacturer on his own account since 1850. He, too, was a quiet, dignified man, very highly esteemed in both the United States and Europe. Lewis Miller, who deserves most credit as the creator of the mower, continued to do business at Akron. Mr. Miller was almost equally famous as a Methodist and the originator of the Chautauqua idea. At Auburn, N. Y., David M. Osborne was fighting manfully to keep in the race. He had built seven Reapers as early as 1856; and had made many friends by his ability and uprightness. At Hoosick Falls, N. Y., there was Walter A. Wood--a most competent and enterprising man; at Plano, Illinois, there was William H. Jones--self-made and as honest as the soil; and at Springfield, Ohio, were the picturesque William N. Whiteley and the powerful company of Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner. Whiteley was an inventor who had changed a McCormick Reaper into what he called a "combined machine"--a combined Reaper and mower. And Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner had begun to make McCormick Reapers, by means of a license from Seymour and Morgan, in 1852. [Illustration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1858]