28 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



constant watchfulness and great strength to prevent it from 

 being tlirown out of the ground. To plough to any consider- 

 able depth it was necessary to have a man at the beam to 

 bear down. The mould-board was often shod with iron to 

 lessen the friction and prevent wear, but it was usually in 

 strips, often of uneven thickness, so that the desired effect 

 was not always attained. The cast-iron plough remedied these 

 serious defects, and secured at least some greater uniformity 

 in construction. The modifications of the mould-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 l;ibor, while the cost of the implement, consider- 

 ing its greater efficiency and its durability, is less by half, 

 probably, than the old wooden plough. 



WHAT WE IIAA'E GAINED. 



There can be no doubt that the saving to the country from 

 these improvements in the plough, 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 ploughs, or that the 

 aggregate of crops has been increased by them many millions 

 of bushels. The plough has also been modified to adapt it to 

 a much greater variety of soils. In the mode of manufacture, 

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

 ago it was made sometimes on the farm, sometimes by the 

 village blacksmith, and the wheelwriglit. The work is now 

 concentrated in fewer establishments, which make it a spec- 

 ialty. In Massachusetts, for example, in 1845, there were 

 seventy-three plough-manufactories, making 61,334 ploughs 

 and other instruments annually, while in 1855 the number of 

 establishments had decreased to twenty-two, which made 

 152,686 ploughs, valued at $707,176.86, annually. A very 

 large plough-factory was established in Pittsburg, Pennsjd- 

 vania, in 1829, and, as early as 1836, it was manufacturing as 

 many as a hundred ploughs a day, by the aid of steam-power, to 

 supply chiefly the Southern market. This establishment first 

 made a hill-side revolving-beam plough, and the iron-centre 

 plough, and more recently it has made avast number of steel 



