4 American Economic Association [802 



ing agricultural conditions, in speaking of North Caro- 

 lina, says : " Throughout the whole of the low country 

 the agricultural labours are performed by negro slaves, 

 and the major part of the planters employ them to drag 

 the plough ; they conceive the land is better cultivated 

 and calculate besides that in the course of a year a horse, 

 for food and looking after, costs ten times more than a 

 negro, the annual expense of which does not exceed 

 fifteen dollars." 1 



Even so late as the year 1812, the French settlers in 

 Southern Illinois were using plows " made of wood with 

 a small point of iron fastened upon the wood by strips 

 of rawhide, the beam resting upon an axle and small 

 wooden wheels. They were drawn by oxen yoked by 

 the horns by raw leather straps, a pole extending back 

 from the yoke to the axle." Small plows for plowing 

 between the rows of corn were not introduced until 

 about the year 1815. "They used carts that had not a 

 particle of iron about them." 2 



The Gary plow, which seems to have been a fair type 



the plows f ed during later colonial times and until 

 <iT ' 



well into the nineteenth century had a " wrought iron 



share, wooden landside and standard, and wooden mould 

 board plated over with sheet iron or tin and short up- 

 right handles." 3 The Old Colony plow, which was still 

 in general use in the Eastern States in 1820, " had a ten- 

 foot beam and a four-foot landside " and it made the " fur- 

 rows stand up like the ribs of a lean horse in the month 

 of March." 4 



'F. A. Michaux, Travels in America in 1802, p. 291. 



2 Mass. Agr. Report for 1873-4, p. 18. 



3 Eighth Census, Agriculture, p. xviii. Mass. Agr. Report for 1853, 

 p. 422. 



* Year Book, Dep. rtment of Agriculture (1899), p. 315. 



