THE USE OF STEAM ON THE FARM. 269 



ceeds. It requires from four to six men to work the machine, 

 which, with its ropes and rope-porters, its anchors, pulleys, 

 gang-machine and engine would be called a complicated and 

 unmanageable apparatus to perform so simple an operation 

 as that of ploughing. 



Patents have been granted in England to many persons for 

 steam-ploughs, but none but Fowler's has stood the practical 

 test or been acknowledged a success. In 1870 Lord Dun- 

 more perfected a traction engine, light and simple in construc- 

 tion, which drew three ploughs, and on turf and heavy clay 

 soil that had not been ploughed for forty years, ploughed five 

 acres per day at a cost of one dollar per acre ; but it has not 

 yet appeared in the field as the competitor of the Fowler 

 machine. 



For the past fifteen years inventive genius in the United 

 States has often been directed to this matter, and many patents 

 have been granted; a large proportion of these efibrts, how- 

 ever, ended with the securing of the patent. A few went so 

 far as to construct a machine and bring it to the test of actual 

 work, and these will be noticed in their order. All, or nearly 

 all of our attempts have been more to invent a machine on the 

 traction principle. Under the impetus of a premium of three 

 thousand dollars offered by the Illinois State Agricultural 

 Society, John W. Fawkes, of Lancaster, Pa., invented and 

 constructed a traction steam-plough in 1857. It was tried at 

 the state fair in Centralia in September, 1858. The soil was 

 clayey loam, and very hard in consequence of drought, but it 

 drew six jDloughs, each cutting a furrow one foot wide and 

 eight inches deep, and ploughed at the rate of three and one- 

 half acres per hour. After ploughing two acres the com- 

 mittee pronounced it a decided success, and awarded it the 

 premium. At a subsequent trial, however, in the month of 

 November, on ordinary prairie-land, it signally failed. The 

 inventor spent a year in making improvements, and presented 

 it at the state fair at Frceport, in the fall of 1859, but it 

 failed in power to reach the field designated for the trial, and 

 was abandoned as useless. In 1859 James Waters, of Detroit, 

 presented a machine of his own invention and manuficture 

 for trial at the fair of the United States Agricultural Society 

 at Chicago. The machine was thirty-seven feet in length, 



