THE CHOICE OF PLOWS 187 



and a diversity of crops. The soils are heavier than on the 

 Coastal Plain, but have been so long under a one-crop system 

 that they have lost to a large extent not only their fertility but 

 their supply of vegetable matter. They are therefore sticky 

 when wet and very hard when oUy, with a tendency to run to- 

 gether with a heavy rain, even after plowing. 



One of the chief types of farm management in the Piedmont 

 section is that of the plantation, where large farms are par- 

 celed out to Negro tenants, who furnish their own equipment. 

 The Negro's acreage is usually small, and in the absence of 

 personal capital he must rely upon advances made by the owner 

 or the storekeeper, who naturally limit him to the bare neces- 

 sities. The one-crop system is followed, and the ravages of 

 the boll weevil are such that extensive credit based on the re- 

 turns of the crops is unwise. The Negro's equipment, there- 

 fore, is usually limited to a light steer or a decrepit mule, and 

 the cheapest possible implements, including an eight-inch turn- 

 ing plow costing about $1.50. 



The lack of sufficient power has tended to reduce plowing 

 to a matter of small teams and plows, since an average of one 

 work animal per farm laborer is not maintained throughout 

 the Cotton Belt States. The lack of power results in the gen- 

 eral use of small moldboard plows adapted to shallow plowing, 

 although the General Educational Board and the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, through the cooperative 

 Demonstration Work founded by the late Dr. S. A. Knapp, 

 are teaching not only diversified farming, but deeper plowing. 

 Three and four mule riding plows, frequently reversible, are 

 thus coming into use. These are usually disk plows, since 

 they are better adapted to working in hard or sandy ground, 

 and in land that has once been cultivated but allowed during 

 a rest period to revert to an overgrowth of timber. Small 

 double moldboard plows, known as "middle-busters," are used 

 in cotton fields to break out the middles i. e., the old roots 

 from the previous season's planting. Local prejudices and soil 



