Yet this device also had its disqualifications, the chief one being that it converted the human sheaf-binder into a sweat-shop worker.

It was necessary to bind the grain as rapidly as the platform brought it up; the worker was therefore kept in constant motion; and the consequences were frequently distressing and nerve racking.

Yet this "Marsh Harvester" remained the great favorite with farmers from about 1860 to 1874.
All this time, however, there was a growing feeling that even the Marsh harvester did not represent the final solution of the problem; the air was full of talk and prophecies about self-binders, something that would take the loose wheat from the platform and transform it into sheaves.
Hundreds of attempts failed until, in 1874, Charles B.Withington of Janesville, Wisconsin, brought to McCormick a mechanism composed of two steel arms which seized the grain, twisted a wire around it, cut the wire, and tossed the completed sheaf to the earth.

In actual practice this contrivance worked with the utmost precision.

Finally American farmers had a machine that cut the grain, raked it up, and bound it into sheaves ready for the mill.