1861. 



THE ILLmOIS FAEMEE. 



233 



change, for farmers are generally slow in 

 these things, and have a fondness for the 

 old and long tried beaten paths. 



TWO-HORSE CULTIVATORS. 



The first object is to cheapen the culture. 

 So long as the margin of profit was large, 

 and as corn held the monopoly, it mattered 

 less how, or with what it was cultivated, but 

 now when the margin is small, if not doubt- 

 ful, it becomes us to use every efibrt to cheap- 

 en its culture, for five cents saved in culture 

 13 five cents profit or so much less of loss. 



It has been sufficiently demonstrated that 

 with a properly constructed two-horse culti- 

 vator, that the quality of the work is supe- 

 rior to that done with a single horse, while 

 in addition the two horses will do more than 

 if worked singly and at the same time save 

 the labor of one man — that is, two horses 

 and one man can work eighty acres as easily 

 as two men and two horses. We will sup- 

 pose the corn is worked four times, at four 

 aores a day with a single horse, and we have 

 a saving of forty days, which for wages and 

 board, including bad weather, is not less than 

 forty dollars. This, if the crop averages 40 

 bushels to the acre, is about one and a fourth 

 cents per bushel on the crop of eighty acres, 

 or half a dollar to the acre ; but in addition 

 to this we have no doubt that the crop will 

 average five or ten bushels more ; nor does 

 the difference stop here, for with this kind 

 of cultivator the crop is drilled in, which 

 will make a saving first on the cost of the 

 machine for drilling over the planter, and 

 second, in marking off', and in the saving of 

 the extra hand to check off" the hills. An- 

 other very important point is that by drill- 

 ing the planting can follow the plowing, in- 

 stead of waiting until a whole field is plow- 

 ed, harrowed and marked off". Here, then, 

 is a continuous advantage from the begin- 

 ning, and which cannot at this time be over- 

 looked, if we have any regard to the profits 

 of corn growing. Under this process we 

 think four workings are better than five un- 

 der the old. We cannot put this diflference 



at less than five cents on the bushel, which 

 at the present selling price is no small item. 

 If corn will barely pay at twenty-five cents 

 under the two-horse system. That is, we 

 would rather grow corn for twentj cents, un- 

 der this new plan, than twenty-five under the 

 old. When corn was worth fifty cents the 

 profit was so large that it could be worked 

 with almost any implement and yet prove 

 satisfactory, but now when it is selling be- 

 low cost, one of three things must occur : a 

 rise in price, the cheapening of its culture 

 or an abandonment of the crop for commer- 

 cial purposes. Of the two horse cultivators 

 we have already a large variety of patterns, 

 all of them more or less valuable ; some of 

 them with seats for riding, some to be guid- 

 ed with a lever, and others in the ordinary 

 way of cultivators. None that we have seen 

 come up to what they should or will be. 



We have one, with rollers to crush the 

 lumps, which we look upon as a valuable 

 feature, but the cost of it and the imperfect 

 manner of its constraction will not allow of 

 its general use. With this cultivator we can 

 work any drilled crop, however small, when 

 the land is in good order, doing better and 

 more work with two horses than by any other 

 mode, and still we would not recommend it 

 for the reason given : too complicated, 

 too expensive and too frail. Its first eost 

 was fifty dollars, full twice what it ought to 

 be. The rollers, the cultivator, and the shoe 

 to protect the young plant from being cov- 

 ered with clods and earth are all properly 

 conceived, but the arrangement of the parts 

 are all wrong, lacking cheapness, durability 

 and ease of handling. The skavering knives 

 that formed a part of the machine we have 

 laid aside as useless ; the guiding apparatus, 

 which was cumbersome and liable to get out 

 of order, has been abandoned as unnecessa- 

 ry, and we would strip the thing of all its 

 expensive gearing, place the cultivators on a 

 solid frame, to run on cast rollers like the 

 sections of a common field roller, say not 

 over two feet in diameter. No farmer who 



