332 Percy Wells Bidwell 



piemen ts, was still used to some extent in reaping wheat; for cutting 

 other grains and grass, the scythe and cradle were used.^ 



For the all-important business of ploughing the farmer was but 

 poorly equipped. Flint has given us a description of two of the 

 types of ploughs most frequently used at this time. He says: "The 

 Carey plough had a clumsy wrought-iron share, a land-side and stand- 

 ard made of wood, a wooden mould-board, often plated over in 

 a rough manner with pieces of old saw-plates, tin or sheet-iron. 

 The handles were upright, and were held by two pins; a powerful 

 man was required to hold it, and double the strength of team now 

 commonly used in doing the same kind of work. The 'bar-side 

 plough' or the 'bull plough' was also used to some extent. A flat 

 bar formed the land-side, and a big clump of iron, shaped a little 

 like the half of a lance head, served as a point, into the upper part 

 of which a kind of coulter was fastened. The mould-board was 

 wooden and fitted to the irons in the most bungling manner. The 

 action might be illustrated by holding a sharp-pointed shovel back 

 up, and thrusting it through the ground."^ With such unwieldly 

 instruments, two men or a man and a boy, using three horses or 

 two or three yoke of oxen, could turn over in a superficial manner 

 the soil of one or two acres in a day.^ Some attempts had been 

 made to improve this implement; a cast-iron plough had been in- 

 vented in 1797 in which the mold-board and land-side were cast in 

 one piece,^ but the mass of the farmers were ignorant of these im- 

 provements. The iron plough was even opposed because of the 

 fear that it would poison the earth. 



Harrows were used to further pulverize the soil. These had at 

 times iron, but probably more usually wooden teeth. Of the latter 

 Deane says: "... they are of so little advantage to the land, 

 unless it be merely for covering seeds, that they may be considered 

 as unfit to be used at all. The treading of the cattle that draw 

 them, will harden the soil more, perhaps, than these harrows will 

 soften it."^ All the transportation of crops, manure, timber and 



' The inefficiency of these tools appears in the following figures: Using a sickle, 

 a man could cut one acre of wheat in a day; with a cradle he could cut four 

 acres of oats or barley, and with a scythe, one acre of green grass. Deane, New 

 England Farmer, p. 380. 



2 Eighty Years' Progress, pp. 27-28. See also American Husbandry, I. 81-82. 



3 American Museum, V. 379-380. 



" By Charles Newbold, of New Jersey. See Carver, T. N., Historical Sketch 

 of American Agriculture in Bailey's Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. IV. 56. 

 * New England Farmer. (2 ed.) p. 142. 



