Polytechnic Association Proceedings. ggg 



Invention has not developed so fine results in the science of 

 plowing, as in many others since his time. True, the sharpened stick 

 has gone through many changes — transformations and conformations, 

 and but few, if any reformations — and culuminating, after being shod 

 at toe and heel with iron, in a splendidly finished cast-iron or cast- 

 steel wedge; to be drawn through the earth by from two to a dozen 

 horses or oxen — the cows being no longer beasts of burden — turn- 

 ing it to the depth of from two to eight inches, completely bottom 

 side up, but so compressed by the wedge as to be useless, espe- 

 cially in the lighted till, until a season of sun and frost has decom- 

 posed and upheaved the earth, and at the rate of one and a half to 

 three acres per day, according to the nature of the till, and not 

 restricted by the eight hour law. It would be creditable also to 

 our farmers, if while relieving the cow from her onerous duties, 

 to also restore woman to her proper sphere and be no longer per- 

 mitted to do faim labor as hired help, as is the case on many of 

 our western farms, in the ratio of three women to one man. 



Better harness up that most useful and unwearing agent Steam. 

 and make it do all the work. Tilling the soil, planting the seed, 

 and harvesting the crops so that farming should become a pastime 

 instead of a dreaded labor, almost as tiresome in contemplation as 

 back-aching in execution. 



But I would not perpetuate the use of the wedge or sharpened 

 stick in any of its forms or applications; nor would I build traction 

 engines, as such, to overcome an anchorage capable of mooring the 

 largest ship or shoving a ponderous structure; nor yet would I 

 station an engine or engines with anchors, stakes, chains and cables, 

 and a corps of assistants, equal to a traveling menagerie, with all 

 its parapharnalia, to force that interminable wedge through the 

 surface of the earth, and that not economically. But the soil must 

 be tilled to the last acre within the possible efibrts of the farmer, 

 with any and every implement, and he often fails to get ten acres 

 when he would have fifty. A case in point is that of Mr. Sullivant, 

 of Livingston, Illinois, who last year moved on to a new farm of 

 45,000 acres, and while building a mansion, ditching and hedging 

 his farm, proposed to do but little planting, being quite disorganized 

 by moving, and so advertised for the breaking up of 5,000 acres 

 on contract, 800 only of which were accomplished. His successors 

 in Champange county, the Messrs. Alexanders, accomplished 3,000 

 in the same time, and proposed to break up 15,000 this year, for 

 which their agent, Mr. Eaton, ofiers contract. 



