Such were the most notable men who, together with McCormick and Deering, began in 1880 or soon afterwards to manufacture the new knot-tying device that had become necessary to the Reaper. As for Cyrus H. McCormick himself, he lived to see it the universal grain-cutter of all civilized countries. He lived to see it perfected into one of the most astonishing mechanisms known to man--an almost rational machine that cuts the grain, carries it on a canvas escalator up to steel hands that shape it into bundles, tie a cord around it as neatly as could be done by a sailor, and cut the cord; after which the bound sheaf is pushed into a basket and held until five of them have been collected, whereupon they are dropped carefully upon the ground. Since 1884 there has been no essential change in the fashion of the self-binder. It is the same to-day as when McCormick was alive. In the span of his single life the Reaper was born and grew to its full maturity. He saw its Alpha and its Omega. Best of all, he saw not only its humble arrival, in a remote Virginia settlement, but, as we shall see, he saw it become the plaything of Emperors, the marvel of Siberian plainsmen, the liberator of the land-serf in twenty countries, and the bread-machine of one-half of the human race. CHAPTER VIII THE CONQUEST OF EUROPE By 1850 Cyrus H. McCormick was ready for new business. He now had a factory of his own, and the assistance of his brothers, William and Leander. He had a score of busy agents and a few thousand dollars in the bank. He had fought down the ridicule of the farm-hands. It was only six years since he had set out from his Virginian farm with $300 in his belt and the Idea of the Reaper in his brain; but in those six years he had worked mightily and succeeded. His Reapers were now clicking merrily in more than three thousand American wheat-fields. So, it was a natural thing that in the first flush of victory, he should look across the sea for "more worlds to conquer." There was at that time no general demand for Reapers in any European country. Labor was plentiful and cheap--forty cents a day in Great Britain and about half as much in Germany and France. In Austria and Russia the farm laborers received no wages at all. They were serfs. There was no economic reason why serfs should be replaced by machinery. They had first to become free and expensive to employ, before this Reaper, this product of a free republic, could set them free from the drudgery of the harvest.