34 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



Throughout the whole of the low country the agricultural labors are per- 

 formed by negro slaves, and the major part of the planters employ them to 

 drag the plow ; they conceive the land is better cultivated and calculate 

 besides that in the course of a year a horse, for food and looking after, costs 

 ten times more than a negij;"o, the annual expense of which does not exceed 

 fifteen dollars.^ 



Even so late as the year 1812, the French settlers in southern 

 Illinois were using plows " made of wood with a small point of 

 iron fastened upon the wood by strips of rawhide, the beam rest- 

 ing upon an axle and small wooden wheels. They were drawn by 

 oxen yoked by the horns by raw leather straps, a pole extending 

 back from the yoke to the axle." Small plows for plowing between 

 the rows of corn were not introduced until about the year 181 5. 

 " They used carts that had not a particle of iron about them," ^ 



The Gary plow, which seems to have been a fair type of the 

 plows used during later colonial times and until well into the 

 nineteenth century had a " wrought-iron share, wooden landside 

 and standard, and wooden moldboard plated over with sheet iron 

 or tin and short upright handles." ^ The OJd Colony plow, which 

 was still in general use in the Eastern states in 1820, "had a ten- 

 foot beam and a four-foot landside," and it made the " furrows 

 stand up like the ribs of a lean horse in the month of March." ^ 



One plow, in particular, is deserving of notice. It is the plow 

 which Daniel Webster, in the year 1836, designed and helped to 

 make for the especial purpose of clearing up a certain field on his 

 farm at Marshfield, Massachusetts.^ It was designed to cut a fur- 

 row from 12 to 14 inches deep and has been described as being 

 *' 12 feet long from the bridle (i.e. clevis) to the tip of the handles ; 

 the landside is 4 feet long ; the bar and share are forged together ; 

 the moldboard is of wood with straps of iron ; breadth at heel of 

 moldboard to landside, 1 8 inches ; the spread of the moldboard was 

 2^ inches ; the lower edge of the beam was 2 feet 4 inches above 

 the sole ; width of share 15 inches." With oxen to draw the plow 



1 F. A. Michaux, Travels in America in 1802, p. 291. 



2 Mass. Agr. Report, 1873-1874, p. 18. 



^ Eighth Census, Agriculture, p. xviii ; Mass. Agr. Report, 1853, p. 422. 



* U. S. Dept. Agr., Year Book, 1899, p. 315. 



8 A picture of this plow is given in Roberts, Fertility of the Land, p. 49. 



