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132 



THE ILLINOIS F^Il]MEIl. 



It would appear, that in 1840 several 

 minds were busy in solving the problem 

 of a scouring plow. The first process 

 was to widen the straps ; next to use 

 boiler iron for an entire mold board. — 

 These last were more or less perfect, and 

 under favorable conditions would scour. 



The Fair of the Union Agricultu- 

 ral Society at Ottawa, in the autumn of 

 1810, gave the great impetus, and was 

 the lever that conspired to move the 

 dormant energies of invention, and to 

 place before the farmers of the prairies 

 the Steel Clipper. 



In July, 1841, Lewis Ellsworth offer- 

 ed a special premium on his own behalf^ 

 for a scouring plow, and at the October 

 Fair, held at Naperville, his wish was 

 only partially gratified, with the follow- 

 ing result: ''The plows tried were, one 

 brought from Michigan City, by F. 

 Ames, of cast iron polished ; two from 

 Lockport,of steel with strap mold boards, 

 one open and one closed ; one of a lot 

 of four made by J. T. Gifford of Elgin, 

 being an improvement on the *Cary' 

 plow ; and another called the 'shovel 

 plow.' The preference was given to the 

 Lockport plows, 'as scouring the best — 

 some preferring the open and some the 

 closed mold boards.' " It will thus be 

 seen, that no Steel Clipper had yet been 

 given to the world, though a vast stride 

 had been made in the adaptation of the 

 plow to the prairie. 



It would also appear that the favora- 

 ble opinion held by Mr. Gifford of Jew- 

 ett's plow had not been maintained, as 

 he commenced at an early day to im- 

 prove it. We wore out one of Mr. 

 Gifford's Elgin plows a few years after- 

 wards, and found it an excellent plow ; 

 closely following the 'Gary' in form of 

 mold board, but superior in several re- 

 spects, being an excellent pulverizer of 

 the soil, but with rather a heavy draft. 



rrom the Prairie Farmer, October, 1S42. 



"Jewett's Gary Plow. — We are hap- 

 py to inform our readers that a quantity 

 of these plows have been sent to Messrs. 

 Bottsford & Beers of Chicago, for sale. 

 They are spoken highly of by those who 

 have used them, and it is said they are 

 very superior for turning under stubble. 

 They will also scour in most prairie soils, 

 and some say they will scour in the real 

 black muck.'* 



At the Fair held at Aurora, 1842, 

 Mr. Jewett was present with a large 

 number of these plows for sale, but our 



northern plow makers had quite as good 

 an article, none of which were reliable 

 in all cases, though they would some- 

 times scour, the fault being to a great 

 extent in the material used, which was 

 boiler iron. At this Fair, Scoville & 

 Gates of Chicago, B. F. Jewett of 

 Springfield, John Lane of Lockport, 

 Amos Harvey of Putnam, J. T. Gifford 

 of Elgin, G. W. Renwick do , Daniel 

 Guptal do., and A. S. Jones of DuPage 

 were the exhibitors. At the trial the 

 soil was dry, and all scoured ; but as a 

 thorough trial could not be had, it was 

 postponed until spring, when the same 

 plows were to be thoroughly tested. — 

 These plows were again present at Joliet 

 at a special trial, June 7th, 1843, and 

 A. S. Jones was awarded the 1st premi- 

 um of $25, Daniel Guptal of Kane, 2nd 

 of $10, Scoville & Gates of Chicago, 

 3d of S5. From this time onward steel 

 was used in all of our plows, and the 

 Steel Clipper was presented to the world. 

 Its paternity is due to no one man, but 

 by a gradual improvement among all. — 

 Messrs. Scoville & Gates gave their plows 

 the name, and being large makers the 



Chicago Clippers of this firm held a 

 high rank and became justly popular. 



Messrs. Scoville & Gates. — We 

 now give some personal recollections of 

 the efforts of these gentlemen, in this 

 connection. Our personal acquaintance 

 with them commenced in 1837, at the 

 "Sag,'' now Athens, in Cook county. — 

 Mr. Gates had a smith shop at the Sag, 

 doing work for farmers and canal con- 

 tractors. He gained a popularity with 

 the farmers for his expertness in^making 

 and repairing plows and other farming 

 tools, and in 1840 removed to Chicago, 

 where he started a small shop on West 

 Randolph street. In the autumn of that 

 year he made several plows with sheet 

 iron mold boards, but not being polished 

 they would not scour ; the form of the 

 mold board was rather convex. In 1841 

 the firm of Scoville & Gates was formed 

 for general furnace and foundry busi- 

 ness, and they made several cast iron 

 plows and ground and polished them up. 

 Several of these we took home to our 

 farm, 16 miles from the city ; in fact we 

 were the committee of reference, and 

 many days we spent with these crude ef- 

 forts at a scouring'plow. In the fall of 

 1842 we done all of our fall plowing 

 with a sheet iron mold board polished, it 



scoured and done good work. This we 

 think the first real successful scouring 

 plow made by thein, and was the pioneer 

 pattern used for several year. In the 

 spring of '43, we had their Steel Clip- 

 per perfect as a German steel can be, 

 which we used for several years until it 

 was worn out. In the summer of 1842, 

 they tried all sorts of combinations of 

 metal castings, but without success. — 

 These were ground and polished but 

 would not hold a land polish. 



There is no question that the Union 

 Agricultural Society stimulated the in- 

 vention of a scouring plow at least ten 

 years before it would otherwise have been 

 brought forward. 



In 1843, the form of the Steel Clip- 

 per may have been considered perfect, 

 and nearly all efforts made since have 

 been to give it durability and strength, 

 the thickness of the wearing parts have 

 been doubled, and cast steel used in 

 place of German and Pittsburgh steel ; 

 in fact so great has been the demand of 

 cast steel for mold boards that larjxe es- 

 tablishments have been erected at Pitts- 

 burgh for the making of cast steel blanks 

 for mold boards. The several plow ma- 

 kers sending their patterns and ordering 

 thousands at a time, some of them as 

 high as 20,000 per year. 



No country blacksmith now thinks of 

 making plows, as the demand is so large 

 that new machinery has had to be in- 

 vented for the purpose. 



strawberries. 

 The question is often asked us how 

 many bushels of strawberries can be 

 grown on an acre. As we have never 

 measured an acre to ascertain the num- 

 ber «f bushels produced, we form no 

 estimate. We see it stated that from 

 as high as three hundred bushels per 

 acre have been gathered; but we must 

 confess that this looks rather large. 

 We give a few instances: 



"Great Yield of Strawberries. — 

 At the meeting of the Fruit GroAvers' 

 Society, of Western New York, Mr. 

 Glen stated that from one- tenth of an 

 acre of Crimson Cone strawberry plants, 

 he had gathered eleven hundred quarts 

 of berries. 



This would be at the rate of nearly 

 three hundred bushels to the acre. 



"At your request, made through the 

 Ohio Farmer, I, for one, have kept ac- 

 count of the produce of my strawberry 

 patch. The variety is a mixture of 



