140 POWER AND THE PLOW 



established, or altered with a foreknowledge of the results. 

 His discovery marked a real epoch in agriculture and the 

 beginning of the march of progress which has brought to us the 

 perfect implement of to-day. He first brought denial to 

 Jethro lull's lament of a half dozen decades before, and was 

 the leader of a long line of men who, for the nation, have ful- 

 filled the prophecy of Isaiah "They shall beat their swords 

 into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks." His 

 contribution to the history of the plow was really first utilized 

 in Europe. 



During a trip through Lorraine in 1788, while serving as 

 American Ambassador to France, Jefferson observed carefully 

 the teams and implements used by the plowmen. In his 

 diary he wrote: "Oxen plow here with collars and names. 

 The awkward figure of their moldboards leads one to con- 

 sider what should be its form. The offices of the moldboard 

 are to receive the sod after the share has cut under it, to raise 

 it gradually and to reverse it. The fore end of it should, there- 

 fore, be horizontal, to enter under the sod, and the hind 

 end perpendicular, to throw it over, the intermediate surface 

 changing gradually from the horizontal to the perpendicular. 

 It should be as wide as the furrow, and of length suited to the 

 construction of the plow." He proposed a plan not only for 

 making a moldboard which would present the least possible 

 resistance to the passage of the earth, but for making any 

 number of such moldboards by a common workman, using 

 a process so exact that their forms should not vary by the 

 thickness of a hair. On his return to America, having for- 

 mulated his theories into a practical rule, he made several 

 plows, and in 1793 put them into use on his estates in Albe- 

 marle and Bedford counties, in Virginia. He satisfied himself 

 as to their practical utility and, probably before any other 

 American inventor, proposed to have his moldboards made in 

 future of cast iron. The English Board of Agriculture elected 

 Jefferson an honorary member, and the French Academy ac- 



