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NEW YORK, APRIL 15, 1911 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
THE KING ROAD-DRAG. 
Benefits Secured From the Split Log. 
Wherever clay roads are found in the Northern 
States the season of bad or impassable roads is at 
by an editor-farmer who said: “Brother farmers, 
here we are objecting to this new idea because Mr. 
King wants us to do with a team of horses and a 
homemade drag costing $2.50 what we have been used 
to trying to do with three teams and a $400 road ma- 
hand, or soon will be. A few sections of the country chine. .1 for one will go home and build a drag and and those treated to theusuaT annual 
to have realized 
seem 
the benefit that might be 
had by keeping the sur¬ 
face of a clay road 
smoothed out and so in¬ 
clined as' to shed the 
water into the ditch. 
Here and there one finds 
a piece of road thus 
treated by some man 
who has persistence 
enough to keep a dirt 
road in repair, or in a 
district where the road 
superintendent is alive to 
the value of frequent 
dragging with some sim¬ 
ple form of road plane 
or drag. With no place 
for water to collect on a 
clay road the surface be¬ 
comes tough and im¬ 
pervious under the im¬ 
pact of hoofs and wheels. 
There is nothing easier 
on the horses’ feet than 
such a road. I was 
reared in a country of 
clay soils where roads 
frequently became badly 
cut as soon as autumnal 
rains set in. Nobody did 
a stroke of road work 
from Summer until after 
Spring seeding, unless it 
was to shovel an open 
ditch to drain off stand¬ 
ing pools of water from 
the road. Even this was 
sometimes omitted. Sev¬ 
en years ago there came 
to the State Farmers’ 
Institute in Ohio a man 
who had demonstrated 
an idea so well that it 
caught the attention of 
his own State Board of 
Agriculture. He had 
made good roads out of 
bad ones in the sticky 
gumbo soil of Missouri. 
He had made good earth 
roads with a cheap 
homemade device, fre¬ 
quently applied by a man 
and team. This man was 
D. Ward King. His 
enthusiasm for so simple 
a thing as a split log 
drag for making roads 
smooth and dry, caught 
the attention of the farmers at the institute at once 
But 
SPLIT-LOG DRAG IN OPERATION ON EARTH ROAD. Fig. 164 
Others tried it in the same county, and I well remem¬ 
bered driving o*'er a short piece of such road, dragged 
by a progressive farmer, near the county seat. This 
short piece of clay road was a splendid demonstration 
of the difference between frequently dragged roads 
scraping. It 
smooth and dry, 
A GOOD TEAM ON A SPLIT-LOG DRAG. Fig. 165. 
use it to prove or disprove his statements given here.” 
My father was one of the skeptical ones, but he 
caught the spirit and went home to build a drag, to 
sour - . . • -- which he hitched three horses, as his were of the 
idea would 8 ) ^ PC f 1SUac * e some * armers ^ iat his general-purpose class. Before Summer he was testify- pacity and make it last longer. Many drags have 
who 1 d J< “| USe U ^ iem ‘ ^ was the Y an ^ n °t he ing to the real improvement his drag had made in the been built more economically and given as good ser- 
o e shown. The discussion was ended public road between his front gate and his neighbor’s, vice on the road. Anyone wishing to build such a 
many doubted and could not see how so cheap 
3nd simple a device could be so efficient as he declared 
it to be. . It was a funny situation, a man from Mis- 
was 
with enough slope to 
carry rain water off; no 
sign of a rut nor of a 
ridge in the center. I 
have heard since then of 
entire Ohio townships 
adopting the King drag 
and ditch cleaner, the 
latter being a comple¬ 
mentary device for push¬ 
ing loose dirt from the 
ditches far enough into 
the road so that the drag 
could distribute it evenly. 
Many fair-sized farms 
have a lane or roadway 
leading from the farm¬ 
stead back to the farthest 
field. Some I have seen 
with only a winding trail 
leading back across 
fields which never should 
have been treated in that 
way. Farm roads in clay 
soil are usually allowed 
to have deep ruts and no 
side ditches. The owner 
feels that hand labor is 
too dear for trimming up 
even a narrow road on 
his farm, and the use of 
a road grading machine 
out of the question. I 
have found the split log 
drag very useful in mak¬ 
ing farm roads when 
preceded by the plow to 
open ditches. The illus¬ 
trations here shown, 
Figs. 164 and 165, were 
taken on a farm road, or 
private drive. On either 
side the Stubblefield 
comes to the very edge 
of the road. In Fig. 164 
the angle at which the 
drag is drawn and the 
position of the driver are 
seen. Behind the drag 
is the smooth sloping 
surface left by it. The 
other picture was taken 
partly to show the build 
of the team which was 
equal to the task, and 
how the front side of the 
drag gathers up loose 
dirt and distributes it al¬ 
ways toward the road 
center. This drag was 
built from a split log of red oak, held together by 
square bars of iron having burrs and washers at the 
ends. It also has the back of an old saw fastened to 
the face of the front log to increase its cutting ca- 
