Obed Hussey

Obed Hussey, by Various

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Title: Obed Hussey Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap
Author: Various
Editor: Follett L. Greeno
Release Date: October 15, 2006 [EBook #19547]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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HUSSEY ***

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[Illustration: Hussey's American Reaper]

OBED HUSSEY
WHO, OF ALL INVENTORS, MADE BREAD CHEAP
Being a true record of his life and struggles to introduce his greatest
invention, the reaper, and its success, as gathered from pamphlets
published heretofore by some of his friends and associates, and
reprinted in this volume, together with some additional facts and
testimonials from other sources.

EDITED BY FOLLETT L. GREENO
1912
COPYRIGHTED 1912 BY FOLLETT L. GREENO

PREFACE
Every step in the progress of modern achievement has been met with
strong resistance and hostile contest. There is in business an actual
firing line where continuous conflict wages, and so fierce does the
struggle become that it requires a certain class of men possessing
qualities, not only of energy and perseverance, but of tenacity and
combativeness, aggressive and determined to fight to the last ditch for
commercial supremacy. Such men do not always rely upon the merits
of their cause, nor do they stop to question the justice or injustice of
their methods. They have but one goal, commercial supremacy, and
every effort is bent and every man and method utilized to attain that
end.
Men of inventive genius are rarely of that type. They are more often
unassuming and averse to anything like a personal combat. Such a man
was Obed Hussey, inventor of the reaper. Honest and conscientious,
enured to hard and unremitting toil, with the inspiration of a new idea
for the benefit of mankind burning in his brain, he applied himself in

the face of immense difficulties to the production and perfection of the
great gift which he gave to the world. He was a man at once so humble
and so broad in his kindness, so loyal to his Quaker ideals of
righteousness and justice, that he offered no protests, or arguments
against his rivals and opponents other than the superiority of his own
machine. Only his great genius which produced the superior machine (a
fact which no one could possibly contradict) could have saved him
from the fierce opposition of his more powerful rivals. One has only to
read from some of his own letters reproduced in this narrative, to
witness the fairness of his attitude, or to gain a knowledge of his
scruples.
Yet it was just this which has operated to deprive Obed Hussey of his
well deserved fame as inventor of the reaper. Moreover, a great
industry, fostered by his opponents in the patent controversy, has
grown up, the basis and life of which is Obed Hussey's invention of the
reaper. It would seem that the vast fortunes made from this industry
should be ample reward for those who are receiving the benefits of a
man's life work without whose genius it would never have been.
In 1897 there was published in Chicago a booklet entitled "A Brief
Narrative of the Invention of Reaping Machines," a large part of which
is reproduced in this book. The pamphlets of which the narrative was a
republication were from the pen of Edward Stabler, an able man and a
mechanic of great skill and ability, a close friend of Mr. Hussey and
one familiar with his reaper and with all the facts which he set forth in
these articles. Such other facts and information as are published herein
were furnished by Martha Hussey, daughter of Mr. Hussey, now living
and by my uncle, Hon. Alexander B. Lamberton, who married Mr.
Hussey's widow. Mr. Lamberton is a man of high standing, having for
many years taken an active part in the affairs of Rochester. He was
President of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, 1901-1904 (three
successive terms), and has been President of the Rochester Park Board
for the past eleven years. He also won national fame as a hunter and
naturalist and was President of the National Association for the
Protection of Fish and Game. His relation to the Hussey family has
made him conversant with the whole history of the invention of the

reaper and of Mr. Hussey's early struggles.
The facts as set forth in this volume are well known to the reaper men
of the United