Such were the strong men whom William Deering faced when he came, without a shred of experience, into the harvester world. He had no ancient patent-rights, like McCormick. He could not outrace thirty competitors in a wheat-field, like Whiteley and Jones and Adriance and Osborne. One way was left open to him. "I'll beat them," he said, "by making a better machine." He set out upon such a search for improvements that, during the rest of his life, inventors fluttered around him like moths around a candle. Until 1879, the best harvester was a self-binder that tied the sheaves with wire. It was the invention of Sylvanus D. Locke, and had been developed to its highest point of perfection by a farm-bred inventor named C. B. Withington, who is still living in Wisconsin. The Withington machine was pushed by McCormick with great energy, and fifty thousand were sold between 1877 and 1885. It was a marvelously simple mechanism, consisting mainly of two steel fingers that moved back and forth, and twisted a wire band around each sheaf of grain. As a machine it was a complete success; but the farmers disliked it. "The wire will mix with the straw," they said, "and our horses and cattle will be killed." So, when Deering met John F. Appleby, a stocky mechanic who claimed to have invented a twine self-binder, he at once set him to work upon fifty of the new machines. When Deering saw his first Appleby binder at work in a field of wheat, he was enthralled. Here, at last, was the perfect harvester. Its strong steel arms could flash a cord around a bundle of grain, tie a knot, cut the cord, and fling off the sheaf, too quickly for the eye to follow. It seemed magical. "What am I to do?" asked the farmer who bought the first of these machines, as he climbed upon the seat and prepared to cut his grain. "Do!" exclaimed John Webster, the Deering mechanic. "Do nothing! DRIVE THE HORSES." The amazed farmer started the horses, drove around the field, and came back swinging his hat and shouting like a lunatic--as well he might. For in the trail of his harvester the sheaves lay bound, as though there were some kindly genie hidden among its wheels. Deering owned, at that time, not much more than a million dollars--the gleanings of thirty-five industrious years. But he resolved to stake it all upon this amazing machine. If he lost--he would be a poor man at fifty-three. If he won--he would be the harvester king of the world. "I'll move the factory to Chicago and make 3,000 of these Appleby twine-binders at once," he said. His partner, E. H. Gammon, held back, so the inflexible Deering bought him out, and from that day he, like his greatest competitor, McCormick, ran a one-man business. "Did you hear the news about Deering?" gossiped his fellow manufacturers. "Clean crazy on a twine-binder!"