Editing McCormick reaper (section)

==Competitive reapers==
Although the McCormick reaper was a revolutionary innovation for the harvesting of crops, it did not experience mainstream success and acceptance until at least 20 years after it was patented. This was because the McCormick reaper lacked a quality unique to Obed Hussey's reaper. Hussey's reaper used a sawlike cutter bar that cut stalks far more effectively than McCormick's. Only once Cyrus McCormick was able to acquire the rights to Hussey's cutter-bar mechanism (around 1850) did a truly revolutionary machine emerge.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Olmstead|first=Alan L. |title=The Mechanization of Reaping and Mowing in American Agriculture |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=35 |issue=2 |date=June 1975|page=327 |doi=10.1017/s0022050700075082|s2cid=154366322 }}</ref> Other factors in the gradual uptake of mechanized reaping included natural cultural conservatism among farmers (proven tradition versus new and unknown machinery); the poor state of many new farm fields, which were often littered with rocks, stumps, and areas of uneven soil, making the lifespan and operability of a reaping machine questionable; and some amount of fearful [[Luddite fallacy|Luddism]] among farmers that the machine would take away jobs, most especially among hired [[manual labour]]ers.<ref name="PrippsMorland1993p17">{{Citation |last1=Pripps |first1=Robert N. |last2=Morland |first2=Andrew (photographer) |year=1993 |title=Farmall Tractors: History of International McCormick-Deering Farmall Tractors |series=Farm Tractor Color History Series |publisher=MBI |location=Osceola, WI, USA |isbn=978-0-87938-763-1 |page=17}}</ref>

Another strong competitor in the industry was the Manny Reaper by [[John Henry Manny]] and the companies that succeeded him. Even though McCormick has sometimes been simplistically credited as the [sole] "inventor" of the [[Reaper#Mechanical reapers in the U.S.|mechanical reaper]], a more accurate statement is that he independently reinvented aspects of it, created a crucial original integration of enough aspects to make a successful whole, and benefited from the influence of more than two decades of work by his father, as well as the aid of Jo Anderson, a slave held by his family.<ref>{{cite news|title=Jo Anderson|url=http://www.richmond.com/special-section/black-history/article_277b0072-700a-11e2-bb3d-001a4bcf6878.html|access-date=22 April 2015|newspaper=[[Richmond Times-Dispatch]]|date=5 February 2013}}</ref>