SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 89 



farms and machine cultivation of the West was no longer pos- 

 sible, and only those sections suitable for dairying, stock raising, 

 and market gardening continued to prosper. The competition 

 of the eastern farmer with the farmer of the Western prairies 

 might have been foreseen to be a hopeless one. So long as the 

 eastern farmer was competing with the pioneer farmer of the 

 earlier type, who had to spend the first ten or fifteen years in 

 the task of clearing his land of trees and stumps, the eastern 

 farmer could easily hold his own. The settler of the prairie 

 farm escaped all that arduous toil. He could begin plow- 

 ing his land at once, being hindered only by the natural tough- 

 ness of the prairie sod. He could raise a fair crop the first 

 year. After two or three years of cultivation the sod rotted and 

 the soil, rich with thousands of years of vegetable mold, became 

 as mellow and as easily cultivated as that of the old and highly 

 improved farms of the eastern states and of Europe. It is 

 interesting to note, however, that the earliest settlers in the 

 prairie states, having come from heavily timbered states, habit- 

 ually avoided the prairie lands and sought rather the fringes 

 of timber that bordered the rivers and creeks. But it was 

 soon seen that the prairie soil was not only more easily re- 

 duced to cultivation, but was actually better soil than that 

 which bore timber. 



Sometimes it was not even necessary to plow the prairie 

 land before the crop could be raised. Furrows were plowed 

 across the sod and the corn was planted in the bottom of these 

 and covered with a hoe. The soil was so very rich and there 

 were so few pests that a fair crop could be grown the first year 

 with practically no cultivation. Another method of growing 

 the first crop, however, was to plow the land and plant the 

 corn in the upturned sod by means of an ax or mattock. For 

 the turning of this sod a heavy breaking plow of a special 

 design was used. It was commonly drawn by three or four 



