Proceedings of Eighth Annual Meeting 129 



course, impossible to cut a ditch by pulling the plow with cable to 

 the extreme end, if that ditch empties in a creek or river. There- 

 fore the cut is made as near as the power plant. It is, of course, 

 impossible to cut a ditch by pulling the plow with cable to the ex- 

 treme end, if that ditch empties in a creek or river. Therefore 

 the cut is made as near as the power plant will permit when the 

 plow can be taken out, turned around, placed into the creek or river 

 and pulled to the ditch from which it was taken. With the old 

 plow 123^ minutes were consumed in digging out and removing the 

 plow from the ditch. With the new plow but ^ minute is needed 

 to hook the cable to the "A" frame and pull the plow board from 

 the ground, and with a properly placed anchor and snatch block 

 the plow can be moved to the creek or river and the ditch connected 

 in a much shorter time than was required to cut by hand spade. 

 Consequently we discarded the two-man 10x30 inch spade. 



To say the least we had greatly improved working conditions and 

 the men no longer complained of the cable being too much for two 

 men. 



It now seemed a shame to waste a good plow on a slow moving 

 power plant like the one we had used since 1914. To move this 

 plant two heavy anchors had to be carried out and a cable dragged 

 to the anchors. This operation was repeated to get the necessary 

 500 feet before the plow was pulled. A tractor could move without 

 all this work therefore our thoughts were turned to tractors. At 

 this time I would like to state that the Atlantic County Mosquito 

 Extermination Commission was not alone in the idea of using a 

 tractor in this work. Mr. Eaton was also in need of a power plant 

 and we thought that we could both save money by pooling our ideas. 

 As it turned out, Mr. Eaton was forced to carry the burden of the 

 experimental work. These thoughts were not by any means new ; 

 the subject had been discussed for several years and we were on the 

 lookout for a small caterpillar tractor that would do the work. 

 The caterpillar type of tread seemed to be the only practical tread 

 to use on the salt marsh, and a i^ ton tractor was selected for 

 trial, — and in competition a Fordson. The Fordson is a wheel type 

 tractor and we did not consider it seriously, but were willing to be 

 shown. Much to our surprise the demonstration proved beyond a 

 doubt that the Fordson, equipped with extension rims, was far super- 

 ior to the caterpillar type. Neither tractor had traction enough to 

 pull the 10x30 inch plow and we found that to get one with suffici- 

 ent line pull, it would weigh five tons and cost $4,500. There was one 



