Obed Hussey | Page 6

so much advantage to the World. I
know I was the first one who successfully accomplished the cutting of
grain and grass by machinery. If others tried to do it before me it was
not doing it; being the first who ever did it, why should I be obliged to
suffer and toil most, and get the least by it? No man knows how much I
have suffered in body and mind since 1833, on account of this thing,
the first year I operated it in Balto. Three years after I cut the first crop,
I could not go to meeting for many weeks for want of a decent coat,
while for economy I made my own coffee and eat, slept in my shop,

until I had sold machines enough to be able to do better; there was no
rascality in all that. My machines then cost me nearly all I got for them
when counting moderate wages for my own labour. The Quaker who
lent me the ninety dollars ten years afterward would not then (ten years
before) trust me for iron, one who was not a Quaker did. There is one
thing not generally understood; thou will remember the trial at Lloyd's,
thou remembers also that I received the purse of 100 dollars; now what
would the world suppose I would do? Why that I would do like the
flour holders, keep the price up! But it is a fact and can be proved, that
after it was announced to me that the verdict was in my favor I said to a
gentleman now I will reduce my price 10 dollars, on each machine, and
I did it, from that hour and did not breathe my intention until after that
decision was announced to me! Where is the man who has done the like
under similar circumstances? There is no 'rascality' in that. Now I do
not believe that there is a reaper in the country (which is good for
anything) at so low a price as mine, and not one on which so little profit
is made.
"I will inclose a pamphlet which I suppose thee has already seen--it
may be useful.
"Thy friend,
(Signed) "OBED HUSSEY."
Mr. William N. Whitely, an early inventor and manufacturer of
harvesting machinery, who was for many years the king of the reaper
business, and who fought the Hussey extension "tooth and nail," on
January 8, 1897, wrote to the "Farm Implement News" upon the subject
of McCormick's portrait on the silver certificates, then about to be
issued, in which he refers also to Mr. Hussey, as follows:
[Sidenote: From the Pen of a Hussey Opponent]
"Editor 'Farm Implement News':
"Having been informed that the bureau of engraving and printing was
preparing new $10 silver certificates to be ornamented by the busts of

Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, and C. H. McCormick,
'inventor of the reaper,' I write you to say that it would manifestly be
unjust to credit the invention of the reaper to any one man. Mr.
McCormick does deserve great credit for his enterprise and business
skill in the many years he was engaged in manufacturing harvesting
machinery and we are pleased to honor his memory; yet so much has
been done in bringing the reaper to its present state of perfection by the
many thousands of inventors that our government would make a
mistake in singling out Mr. McCormick from the many meritorious
ones who have contributed so much to the reaper of the past and of the
present day. We well understand that no effort has been spared for
many years past in keeping C. H. McCormick before the American
people as the inventor of the reaper by his immediate relatives and
friends, and we have no right to find fault with such a course upon their
part; but when the great government of the United States of America
proposes to certify by the above mentioned course to the correctness of
the claims made for C. H. McCormick as the inventor of the reaper, to
the disparagement of so many other worthy inventors and co-workers
upon the reaper, then those who know better should raise their voices
against such an attempted recognition for any one man, of whom the
best that can be said is that he was only one of the many.
[Sidenote: The Reaper Itself Mr. Hussey's Contribution]
"From 1831 to 1834, and for several years thereafter, two persons, i.e.,
Obed Hussey and C. H. McCormick, were striving to produce a
successful reaping machine for cutting grain and grass, as were many
others, before and since. These two men were contemporaneously in
the field, and no doubt they both labored faithfully to accomplish the
desired result. The invention of Obed Hussey, the features of