The American pioneers had only a sickle or a scythe with which to cut their grain. The addition to the scythe of wooden fingers, against which the grain might lie until the end of the swing, was a natural step, and seems to have been taken quite independently in several places, perhaps as early as 1803. Grain cradles are still used in hilly regions and in those parts of the country where little grain is grown. The first attempts to build a machine to cut grain were made in England and Scotland, several of them in the eighteenth century; and in 1822 Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster in Rennington, made a mechanical reaper, but the opposition of the laborers of the vicinity, who feared loss of employment, prevented further development. In 1826, Patrick Bell, a young Scotch student, afterward a Presbyterian minister, who had been moved by the fatigue of the harvesters upon his father's farm in Argyllshire, made an attempt to lighten their labor. His reaper was pushed by horses; a reel brought the grain against blades which opened and closed like scissors, and a traveling canvas apron deposited the grain at one side. The inventor received a prize from the Highland and Agricultural Society of Edinburgh, and pictures and full descriptions of his invention were published. Several models of this reaper were built in Great Britain, and it is said that four came to the United States; however this may be, Bell's machine was never generally adopted. Soon afterward three men patented reapers in the United States: William Manning, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1831; Obed Hussey, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1833; and Cyrus Hall McCormick, Staunton, Virginia, 1834. Just how much they owed to Patrick Bell cannot be known, but it is probable that all had heard of his design if they had not seen his drawings or the machine itself. The first of these inventors, Manning of New Jersey, drops out of the story, for it is not known whether he ever made a machine other than his model. More persistent was Obed Hussey of Cincinnati, who soon moved to Baltimore to fight out the issue with McCormick. Hussey was an excellent mechanic. He patented several improvements to his machine and received high praise for the efficiency of the work. But he was soon outstripped in the race because he was weak in the essential qualities which made McCormick the greatest figure in the world of agricultural machinery. McCormick was more than a mechanic; he was a man of vision; and he had the enthusiasm of a crusader and superb genius for business organization and advertisement. His story has been told in another volume of this series.* * "The Age of Big Business", by Burton J. Hendrick.