REAPER MAN
By
The biography of Cyrus Hall McCormick, who developed, among specialized and important farm equipment, the revolutionizing reaper. The life and times of a boy on a Virginia plantation in 1830, the relationships of slave and master, the family circle, where father was an inventor before the son, are pleasant. The importance of the McCormick invention to agriculture is stated (perhaps the exclusiveness of the invention is overstated) and there is still that oppressively paternal, free- enterprise approach to the vast McCormick International Harvester Company. There is a positively naive, shining, little and chapter on the great advantages of this trust with complete disregard for any disadvantages implicit in ""they could stop the competition that fostered over-buying"" and ""they could stop the ruinous price cutting""... However interesting the details of life in the 1830's may be, the total effect is uncritical.