Essay 11-B: Cyrus Mccormick and the Rise of Mechanical Farming

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

We’ve all heard about the crisis of artificial intelligence and jobs—how AI is going to render millions unemployed. Yet we may not know about the employment crisis of American agriculture in the mid-19th century when mechanical harvesters sliced through the employment of farm laborers.

That wasn’t a crisis at all, it was progress! You see, working as a manual laborer on a farm, cutting crops with a scythe in the hot sun, was actually not such a good job.

So when mechanical reapers were mass-produced, beginning in the 1840s, the standard of living for Americans rose: Farming grew more efficient, and so farm workers migrated to towns and cities, where they found jobs in factories, even as they benefited from lower food prices.

In 1820, nearly 80 percent of American jobs were on the farm; by 1900, that percentage had fallen to 40 percent (today, it’s less than two percent). During those same eight decades, it is estimated that the real gross domestic product of the U.S. rose by more than 600 percent.

To be sure, there were problems with urbanization and industrialization, just as there are problems with any massive social trend. And during the 19th century, from 1861 to 1865, for other reasons, we suffered a bloody civil war.

Yet even so, the nation persevered, and prospered. For that we can thank the free enterprise system, which allowed innovators and entrepreneurs to develop labor-saving technologies.

And we can also thank the U.S. Constitution. Since 1789, our founding document has allowed for the sanctity of contracts, and the safety of private property, including intellectual property, as part of its overall frameworking of industrial and economic productivity.

The life of Cyrus McCormick (1809-1875) provides a snapshot into this virtuous process, which enabled a fellow from the backwoods to emerge as the leading agricultural innovator of the 19th century. Born in rural Raphine, Virginia to a family of modest farmers and tinkerers, McCormick resolved to do something about the low productivity of farm life.

That lifelong desire to solve problems—and, yes, to get rich—inspired him to start the McCormick Harvesting Company near home in 1837. Yet the search for better channels of production and distribution caused him to relocate, a decade later, to the swelling industrial hub of Chicago.

Right here we see the value of another aspect of the Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 guarantees the free travel of persons and products across state lines.
McCormick flourished in the Windy City, and so did the country. In the words of historian William T. Hutchinson, “Of all the inventions during the first half of the nineteenth century which revolutionized agriculture, the reaper was probably the most important.” Hutchinson continued, “The reaper was not the only new agricultural machine which revolutionized the economy of the farm. Harvesting implements of all kinds were in use by the time of the Civil War, but it is slight exaggeration to assert that they all incorporated some of the principles which had made the McCormick reaper a success.”

After the founder’s death, his company merged with four smaller companies to become International Harvester; later, it became Navistar, and today, it is International Motors. Yet by any name, the company is still going strong, still producing goods, still providing jobs.

That’s the power of capitalism, of course, and yet it’s also the power of constitutionalism. The rule of law at home, and strength in the world, enables inventors such as McCormick—joined by regular workers in the millions—to pursue their dreams as their skills empower them. As the Constitution’s principal author, James Madison, wrote in Federalist #10, “The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests.” Yes, people are different, Madison is saying, but they can find the common ground of economic advancement. “The protection of these faculties,” Madison concludes, “is the first object of government.”

Such legal protection—benefiting inventors and farmers alike—has enabled American agricultural output to grow more than one hundred-fold.

We can look at that increase and see that the growth rate is almost Moore’s Law-like. Which reminds us: Our constitutional ship of state has steered us through all the storms of U.S. history—including the development of new technologies, from the mechanical to the chemical to the digital. Our history proves that we can preserve our democratic liberties, even as we change and prosper.

So today, when AI seems so daunting, we can take heart in our own history. We’ve seen difficulty, and opportunity, before. We can do this—so long as we stay true to the Constitution.

Jim Pinkerton was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and serves as a Senior Fellow in the Center for American Prosperity at the America First Policy Institute. He worked in the Domestic Policy Office at the White House under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and in their 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992 presidential campaigns. In 2008, he served as a senior adviser to Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign.

From 1996–2016, Jim was a Contributor to the Fox News Channel. He has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and The Los Angeles Times.

Today, Jim writes regularly for Breitbart, The American Conservative, and The Daily Caller. He is married to our very own Elizabeth Pinkerton and is a graduate of Stanford University.

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