XV 



THE PLOW IN AMERICA 



THE policy of England toward Colonial America was 

 not such as to encourage manufacture, and few 

 plows seem to have been imported. In 1631 there 

 were but thirty-seven plows in Massachusetts Bay 

 Colony. Owners were frequently granted a bounty for keep- 

 ing plows in condition to do the work of the entire town. By 

 1648 the Colony of Virginia had one hundred and fifty plows. 

 The Colonial wheeled plow of 1748 was clumsy and short. 

 Kalm, in his "Travels in North America," writes: "The ill- 

 shaped share and moldboard did not plow deep or straight, 

 and great strength and skill were necessary to guide the 

 plow. The wheels upon which the plow beam is placed are as 

 thick as the wheels of a cart, and all the woodwork is so 

 clumsily made that it requires a horse to draw the plow 

 along a smooth field." 



Jefferson's work was in advance of his generation. His 

 scientific principles were lost in America during the first 

 quarter of the last century, and the improved methods of Ste- 

 phens and others had not been put into practice. Until the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century plows were made by rule 

 of thumb and by the least qualified artisans. A. B. Allen, in 

 1856, described the methods as follows: 



"A winding tree was cut down, and a moldboard hewed 

 from it, with the grain of the timber running so nearly along its 

 shape as it could well be obtained. On to this moldboard, to 

 prevent its wearing out too rapidly, were nailed the blade of 



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