VERTICAL FARMING 61 



enough to secure ease of draft, or raise heavier and faster 

 walking horses. It is not enough that the ox, horse and mule 

 are giving way to steam, gasoline, and electricity, to cable 

 traction and automobile luxury. It is not enough to point with 

 pride from the one-negro-one-mule-one-plow combination to the 

 monster steam gang plows. Something more is demanded. 

 The present machinery is good so far as it goes, and is the best 

 that the world has ever seen until recently, but it does not go far 

 enough. It does not go down. Many remedies have been sug- 

 gested only to meet with a cold reception. It is always difficult 

 to change old conditions, old customs, for there is ever prejudice 

 against such changes. The kind of prejudice that the first cast 

 iron plows (Newbolds, 1797) " poisoned the land " and " caused 

 weeds to grow " is still in existence, and can only be overcome 

 by enlightenment. 



PLOW USED 15Y EARLY AMERICAN 



THE ANCIENTS TYPE 



Shallow Methods Prevail. All methods and machinery in 

 common use are good for preparing the seed bed, but are of 

 little or no use in helping the roots to go down to their natural 

 length ; of no use in improving the soil atmosphere more than a 

 foot or two, or in meeting the many and varied demands of the 

 plant system below the surface. The function of the plow is 

 essentially to turn a thin ribbon of the soil on edge or upside 

 down, and to shatter and break the surface of the earth as much 

 as possible, and to destroy weeds, and bury refuse. Harrows 

 and cultivators have primarily a stirring action that forms 

 mulches and prevents surface evaporation, but they work at 

 even shallower depths than the plow. Some of the instruments 

 used tend to form plow sole, or hardpan and impacted con- 

 ditions of the soil close to the surface, defeating the very object 

 of cultivation. 



