150 POWER AND THE PLOW 



moldboard on mathematical principles and is given credit for 

 being the first to lay down all the lines of a plow on a plane sur- 

 face. His plow was of light draft, but pulverized the furrow 

 very little, hence did not meet with the approval of the Eastern 

 plowmen so well as the same type when later presented to 

 prairie farmers. 



In order to bring out the existing merits of the plows and 

 ascertain certain principles in design and construction, the New 

 York Agricultural Society in 1850 and again in 1867 held 

 famous trials which provided a fund of information for inventor, 

 maker, and farmer alike. Gould's report of the latter in the 

 " Transactions of the New York Agricultural Society" is believed 

 to be the first attempt at a complete history of plows and a 

 discussion of their principles. A larger part of the foregoing 

 information has been abstracted from this source. Many 

 improvements have been made since then in the materials 

 from which plows are constructed, but changes in the shape 

 have been in detail rather than principle and need not be 

 further reviewed. 



Gould does not mention the progress that had taken place 

 in the West in the art of plowmaking, but pioneer inventors 

 had met and solved problems which were as great as had been 

 encountered in the East. The early emigrants to the prairies 

 of Illinois and Iowa found new conditions tough sod, diffi- 

 cult soils, and larger areas under which their older plows were 

 hopelessly inefficient. 



In the colonial period the cultivated land was largely that 

 which had been cleared of timber. It was generally porous 

 and penetrable, with neither old clay land's tendency to stick 

 and bake, nor the mat of living and dead grass, which, above 

 and below the surface, harassed the pioneer plowmen of the 

 plains. The great variation in the soils of a single New Eng- 

 land field made it next to impossible to adjust the plow to the 

 nature of the soil, and as a rule cast iron plows scoured well 

 enough anyhow. Again, farming was hardly on the commer- 



