AMERICAN PLOWS IN ENGLAND. 
323 
stock and sell that. It will bear transportation, 
and there is a great deal of foreign beef and bacon 
sold in the cotton region. Wheat and flour in the 
middle and upper country, could be made to pay 
these contingencies. Rice will grow at the foot of 
the mountains and command a good price, and so 
will tobacco. Many could pay these expenses by 
cutting timber and making shingles, staves, &c. 
In short, there are few planters in the whole cot¬ 
ton region, who might not by a little diversion of 
labor, manage to make what cotton they do, clear 
of the expense of production, and do so profitably. 
Let each planter look around him, and see what 
his resources are. I do not invite him to make his 
own shoes, hats, blankets, clothes, salt, and iron. 
In most cases, others who are in these lines can 
make these things and bring them to his door 
cheaper than he can make them himself. But he 
can follow the business he understands, or at least 
is best prepared to carry on, and make something 
else besides cotton to pay for them. 
“ I know the folly of recommending any meas¬ 
ure to planters, requiring their combined action. 
I recommend this to each planter for his own 
individual advantage , as well as for the sake of 
the whole. While it will diminish the aggregate 
crop, if it curtails but a bale, it will teach each 
man to be independent, to a certain extent, of 
cotton speculators, open his eyes to his own re¬ 
sources, and gradually prepare the way for that 
change of culture which is inevitable, and at 
hand, for allSSthose who can not make a heavy 
bale to the acre. And I would add, that every 
planter should as speedily as possible reduce 
his culture to such land only as will make a heavy 
bale per acre. If he has no such, let him make 
it—manure will soon do it. Cut down the cotton, 
increase the corn and pea crop, pen hogs, cattle, 
and everything else on straw, muck, weeds, &c., 
&c., and he will soon have as much land that will 
raise him a bale to the acre as he wants, if he 
makes no more cotton than he makes clear. 
“ I preach no more than I practice. I am a 
middle-aged planter, and I have nearly always 
made my cotton crop clear. I have suffered my 
share in the hard times, and have met, I think, 
more than my average of losses ; yet I have kept 
above board without any stringent economy, main¬ 
ly because I have paid plantation expenses by sel¬ 
ling corn, peas, oats, &c. My expenses have been 
as heavy as any planter’s of the same force, and 
my land probably as poor; yet I have kept up 
chiefly I think, because I did not have to pay them 
in a lump at the end of the year out of my cotton, 
which would have left me so small a surplus, 
that probably I should not have thought it worth 
taking care of. The balance would have been 
mere odds and ends, which few know how to 
make tell. I have made corn, &c., supply my 
odds and ends of cash, and appropriated them as 
they came to hand to pay current expenses ; and 
when my cotton came in, I could do something 
with my little lump of clear maney. Let me say 
also, that after next year I shall not plant an acre 
but will (or at least ought to) yield me 400 lbs. 
clean cotton. Not one-- and not many I trust next 
year. Yet my land in its best natural condition, 
will not average half that much. What 1 adopt 
for my own good, and experience has proved to 
me is for the good of every planter, both individu¬ 
ally and collectively, I recommend others to try” 
AMERICAN PLOWS IN ENGLAND. 
We wonder that our cotemporaries should so 
worry themselves about the reported failure of 
the working of American plows in England. 
Have not the English plows always equally 
failed in their working in the United States, with 
an American plowman at the end of the handles ? 
The truth is, that the plows of the two nations 
are of so entire different a construction, that an 
Englishman with his prejudices, and without any 
previous practice, is totally unfit to handle an 
American plow; and so is an American, an English 
plow. Had a thoroughbred Yankee been at the 
handles of the American implement, at the late 
trial before the Royal Agricultural Society, at 
Southampton, the result would unquestionably 
have been in its favor ; for we know from repeated 
personal observation, made in both countries, that 
the American plow will do more work with less 
draught than any English plow whatever; and 
that it is upon the whole better fitted to our pur¬ 
poses of plowing round stumps and rocks, or on 
uneven ground, and among stone and gravel, than 
anything from abroad. But in level, smooth land, 
we think it has some defects; the principal of 
which are a want of proper lever purchase in the 
handle, and a miserably contrived clevis. 
When plow-handles are placed in so upright a 
position as is usual with us, the plowman has not 
a proper control over his implement, and it makes 
it hard work for him to handle it in the furrow; 
besides, it is continually bobbing up and down; 
running alternately deep and shallow ; and in and 
out, instead of moving easily, steadily, and smooth¬ 
ly along. This defect has been pretty well reme¬ 
died by Ruggles, Nourse, and Mason, and some 
others; they having adopted nearly the happy 
medium between, we think, the extreme length 
of the Scotch plow-handles, and the short ones of 
America, and added a wheel upon the beam to 
gauge the depth of plowing, and make the draught 
easier. The second defect, the clevis, we sup¬ 
pose has been thus long submitted to because 
more simple and cheaper made—we ought to say 
infinitely dearer in the end. To our mind, the 
Scotch clevis is the most perfect of any we have 
yet seen. It looks bungling, and seems to abound 
in useless machinery ; but let any one use it on. 
his plow a single season, and pay any attention to 
its working, and he will after that never have any 
other, we will be bound to say. As to the make 
of plows, they must be of different sizes and forms 
to suit different purposes ; and this idea of offering 
a single premium for the best plow, is perfectly 
ridiculous; it is like trying a race-horse, a road¬ 
ster, and a cart-horse, together; or pitting a Me¬ 
rino, a Leicester, or a.South Down sheep against 
one another. Each are valuable for particular 
purposes, and we know from considerable practice, 
and much personal observation, that different 
soils—for instance, from heavy clay through the 
