284 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



new inveutiou tliat promised to economize labor and do better work 

 would be at the present day. Many a farmer clung to bis old wooden 

 l^low, asserting that casfirou poisoned the ground and spoiled the 

 crops. He required an ocular demonstration before leaving his money 

 for an iron plow. It was not so much the weight of the old plow as 

 the form of the mold-board, and the construction of the various parts, 

 that needed correction. Its draught was great, on account of the ex- 

 cessive friction. The share and mold-board were so attached as to make 

 too blunt a wedge. Its action was not uniform, and it was difficult to 

 hold, requiring constant watchfulness and great strength to prevent it 

 from being thrown out of the ground. To plow to any considerable 

 depth it w^as necessary to have a man at the beam to bear down. The 

 mold-board was often shod with iron to lessen the friction and prevent 

 ■wear, but it was usually in strii^s, often of uneven thickness, so that 

 the desired eflect was not always attained. The cast-iron plow reme- 

 died these serious defects, and secured at least some greater uniformity 

 in construction. Tlie modifications of the mold-board, which resulted 

 from a better understanding of the true principles of construction, 

 have enabled the farmer to do vastly better work, and a greater amount 

 of it in the same time, and at a less expenditure of strength, and to reap 

 larger crops as the result of his labor, while the cost of the implement, 

 considering its greater efficiency and its durability, is less by half, prob- 

 ably, than the old wooden plow. 



There can be no doubt that the saving to the country from these im- 

 provements in the plow, within the last half century, amounts .to 

 many millions of dollars a year in the cost of teams, and some millions 

 in the cost of plows, or that the aggregate of crops has been increased 

 by them many millions of bushels. The plow has also been modified 

 to adapt it to a much greater variety of soils. In the mode of manu- 

 facture, too, a vast improvement has taken place. Half a century ago 

 it was made sometimes on the farm, sometimes by the village black- 

 smith, and the wheelwright. The work is now concentrated in fewer 

 establishments, which make it a specialty. In Massachusetts, for ex- 

 ample, in 1845, there were seventy-three i)low-manufactories, making 

 61,334 plows and other instruments annually, while in 1855 the number 

 of establishments had decreased to twenty- two, which made 152,686 

 plows, valued at 8707,175.86, annually. A very large plow-factory was 

 established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1829, and, as early as 1836, 

 it was manufacturing as many as a hundred plows a day, by the aid of 

 steam-power, to supply chiefiy the southern market. This establish- 

 ment first made a hill-side revolving-beam plow, and the iron-center 

 plow, and more recently it has made a vast number of steel plows, 

 adapted to the prairie soils of the West. Another factory, in the same 

 city, as early as 1836, made plows at the average rate of 4,000 a year. 

 The two factories made 34,000 plows a year, valued at $174,000. There 

 are now many other still larger factories, some of which make from 

 ten to twelve hundred different patterns, adapted to every variety of 

 soil and circumstance. 



]S!"o one can for a moment doubt the vast superiority of the best of 

 the plows of the present day over the old forms in common use half a 

 century ago. They have greater i)ulverizing power; they are less 

 liable to clog ; while in lightness of draught, ease of holding, durability, 

 cheapness, perfection of mechanical work, quality of material, complete- 

 ness with which the surface is inverted and the weeds or stubble buried, 

 uniformity of wear, regularity of turning the furrow-slice, and other 

 respects, we have made a vast and unquestionable improvement. In 



