116 SOILS 



been broad, high and bent over at the top very 

 little, so that they inverted the soil very neatly but 

 did not crumble it much. It was soon seen that 

 the only way to accomplish this end was to make 

 the furrow slice twist as it turned over. Then was 

 produced the modern broad, flat plowshare with 

 overhanging mouldboard, which accomplishes this 

 result admirably. 



Subsequent to this discovery, during the last 

 half of the nineteenth century improvements on 

 the plow followed rapidly. The length of the 

 beam and handles was increased and the latter 

 set lower, thus making the plow much easier 

 to control. The jointer, that most useful 

 adjunct of the modern plow, was introduced and 

 improved. One of the greatest troubles with the 

 early plows was that they did not "scour" well; 

 that is dirt collected on the mouldboard, making 

 it rough and greatly reducing its efficiency and 

 increasing the draft. The introduction of the 

 Oliver chilled plow, in 1870, was a notable event 

 in plow making. 



About 1870 gang plows were introduced. The first 

 gang plows were two or three plows fastened to one 

 beam. These were very cumbersome and were soon 

 superseded by the sulky gang plow, which is largely 

 used to-day, especially in the West. Various methods 

 of hardening the mouldboards of plows were tried, 

 until carbonising or chilling came into general use for 

 both steel and cast iron plows. Plow making has 

 reached its highest development in America, from 

 which plows are shipped to all parts of the world. 

 There are about 9,000,000 plows in use on American 

 farms, representing an investment of $80,000,000 

 for this tool alone. 



The Modern Plow. The modern plow is the 



