THE CHOICE OF PLOWS 191 



owing to the lack of employment during the dry season and the 

 long winters which require food and shelter for the horses. 

 The horses, however, are usually of fair size, though many small 

 horses bred upon the range are in common use. As a rule 

 farmers are prosperous and able to select the most approved 

 type of implements. Labor is scarce, high priced, and often 

 unreliable, and every effort is made to utilize animal or 

 mechanical power in place of human efforts. 



The walking plow is ,not_a^ practical implement for regular 

 use on the average farnyinjthe Northwest, owing to its waste 

 of human labor. The large area cultivated makes the two- 

 furrow gang plows the most generally popular and useful for 

 use with horses. The large area of level land, free from ob- 

 structions, has created a remarkable field for the engine gang 

 plow, and the percentage of plowing done by mechanical power 

 is rapidly increasing each year. In this section the mold- 

 board plow is by far the most popular. The disk plow is used 

 only occasionally, and then almost always in land which has 

 first been subdued by the use of the moldboard. Where the 

 soil has much clay or gypsum and lime, the steel moldboard 

 scours better than the chilled. Cast shares can be used with 

 either moldboard in all but a few soils, and are cheaper than 

 the steel "lays." The use of larger animals has been accom- 

 panied by a gradual increase in the average size of plows, even 

 in the last decade. 



On irrigated farms in the West the two-way sulky plow is 

 growing in favor, owing to the fact that no dead furrows are 

 left to interfere with the distribution of water. This is a 

 curious and unpremeditated adaptation of a plow designed 

 especially for hilly ground in New England. 



Disk plows are used to subdue much of the sage brush prairie 

 found in the West and Southwest, and the^isk plow increases 

 in favor^ toward the southern latitudes. The topography and 

 size of grain farms in Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New 

 Mexico favor the use of mechanical power and engine gang 



