240 POWER AND THE PLOW 



power and farm methods to one another in the way that will 

 give the most useful results. 



To do this it may be necessary to revise some of our methods 

 of crop production. We are apt to look upon our present 

 methods as the only ones, yet we must remember that the shape 

 of the plow was not finally established until late in the first 

 half of the nineteenth century; that our disk harrow, our sub- 

 surface packer, and in fact practically all of our tillage im- 

 plements and harvesting machines have been devised within 

 fifty years. We must remember they were devised to make 

 use of the only power that has been available for operating 

 them, and that power was exerted in a linear direction. As a 

 result of copying that power, we now have reciprocating en- 

 gines producing rotary power at the crankshaft; transforming 

 this into a forward or linear motion, in a tractor; that again 

 into the rotary motion of the binder wheel, and even finally 

 into reciprocating motion again as in the binder knife, before 

 the power is finally applied to work. Going around Robin Hood's 

 barn is walking the straight and narrow path in comparison. 



Is the plow, for example, capable of further improvement? 

 Or will it be superseded by a rotary mechanism which will per- 

 form the functions of the plow and harrow combined? Pos- 

 sibly something of this sort may supplant the direct tractor. 

 The farm power plant must however do more to replace present 

 methods than simply to prepare the soil. It may not be a wild 

 dream that some day we may see a tractor with plows hitched 

 under the frame, harrows or a pulverizing roller behind, pos- 

 sibly a rotary cylinder with pulverizing teeth taking the place 

 of all three. On the side of the machine we may find a cutter 

 bar, and on top a combined harvester for threshing and sacking 

 the grain all at one operation. To be a complete success, the 

 machine should also bale the straw and, if possible, seed the 

 next year's crop at the same time. 



The elements of all these ideas are now to be found on present 

 gas tractors. We have auto hay presses, and auto threshers; 



