All slovenliness, whether of mind or body, he abhorred. To take thought about a matter and to do it as it ought to be done, was to him a matter of character as well as of business. When a telegram was submitted to him for approval, it was his custom to draw a circle around the superfluous words. This was a little lesson to his managers on the importance of brevity and exactness. He insisted that clocks and watches should be correct, and in his later life carried a fine repeater which could strike the hour in the night and in which he took an almost boyish pride. Once, when he had been given the management of a political campaign in Chicago, he created consternation among the politicians by the rigid way in which he supervised the expense accounts. "This will never do," he said. "Things are at loose ends." If a bill was ten cents too much it went back. One bill for $15 was held up for a week because it was not properly drawn. The amazed politicians could not understand such a man,--who would readily sign a check for $10,000, and put it in the campaign treasury, and yet make trouble about the misplacing of a dime of other people's money. McCormick demanded absolute honesty from his employees. One young man lost his chance of promotion because he was seen to place a two-cent stamp, belonging to the firm, on one of his personal letters. But once he had tested a man, and found him to be pure gold, he trusted him completely. A new employee would be pelted with questions and complete answers insisted upon. This was often a harsh ordeal. It was irritating to a man of independent spirit, until he realized that it was a sort of discipline and examination. McCormick was always an optimist. He was not one of those who said, "Let well enough alone." He never endured unsatisfactory business conditions. When he found that the freight charges on Reapers from Virginia to Cincinnati were too high, he arranged to have Reapers built in Cincinnati. When he found that other manufacturers were apt to be careless as to the quality of their materials, he built a factory of his own. Again and again in the course of his life, came the temptation to be satisfied with what he had already achieved. But he could not endure the thought of being beaten. Instead of being content and complacent, he was far more likely to be planning a wholly new policy, on larger lines.