American Agriculturist 
FARM—DAIRY—MARKET—GARDEN—HOME 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man ”—Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 111 
For the Week Ending February 3, 1923 
Number 5 
Eighty Years With Farm Machinery 
How Would You Like to Go Back to “ The Good Old Days ” 
I N trying to fill the American Agricul¬ 
turist’s request for a brief review of the 
farm implement industry in the last 80 
years, I have not found that anybody has 
written a real and comprehensive history of 
this industry. The subject is so 
interesting, and is so bound up 
with the development of agricul¬ 
ture and of the national pros¬ 
perity, that it would seem well 
Worth the best efforts of any his¬ 
torian’s pen; and these ef¬ 
forts ought to be made 
while there are still some 
living witnesses of the be¬ 
ginnings of this especially 
significant industry. 
It is not so easy now to 
learn exactly what tools the 
farmer had 80 years ago, 
where they were made, and 
how he obtained them. 
.Dates of invention are of 
little use, because then, as 
now, a long period usually 
intervened between the 
patent and general use. 
Fortunately, however, I 
have been permitted to see 
letters which contain the 
recollections of two per¬ 
sons, still living, who tell what they saw 
with their own eyes about the farm equip¬ 
ment of three quarters of a century ago. 
One letter is from a bright old lady over 
at Oxford, Mich,, writing of her father’s 
farm implements 76 years ago. She says: 
“We had a plough and a drag, a wagon 
By ALEXANDER LEGGE 
and long sled or sleigh; a flail and fanning 
mill later on. Some of the grain was 
threshed out by throwing it on the barn 
floor and letting oxen tread on it round and 
round, and some with a flail. We could get 
our wheat ground for bread at Orion, about 
four miles away, where they had a good 
grist mill. 
“It was a good many years before we ever 
heard of a cultivator. I can remember hav¬ 
ing to go, Ann and I, out in the field to drop 
corn for father. When the corn needed culti¬ 
vating, it was done with a hoe, and when ripe 
it was cut down with a corn cutter made by 
cutting down an old grass scythe. They cut 
their hay with a scythe 
and their grain with a 
cradle. “When we wanted 
any corn shelled for meal, 
father would bring a shovel 
into the house and evenings 
he would put the handle on 
a chair and sit on it and 
scrape the corn from the 
cob into a dish.” 
Down at Buncombe, Ill., 
lives a man named Elkins, 
97 years old, with a mind 
and memory that are still 
keen. I quote from a let¬ 
ter, written by his daugh¬ 
ter’s hand, in which he tells 
of the farm equipment that 
he used'as a boy in 1842: 
“We had a bar-share 
plow—a flat piece of, iron 
with the back turned up a 
little for handles and beam 
to be fastened to. It was 
run flat on the ground, just 
scraping a little, and the 
wooden part was made mostly of white 
oak. 
“We also had a bull-tongue plow, very 
narrow and long, made of iron, and a colter 
in front. It was much like the single-shovel 
plow that is in use now. These plows were 
{Continued on page 100) 
The progress represented by the contrast in this picture com¬ 
pletely changed the history of America. The harvester released 
millions to go to the cities and fed them after they had gone 
mold'board forms an angle of about 40 degrees, 
with a line of the beam, and, in operation, will 
throw the dirt from one to three feet, according to 
the speed of the team. In figure 12 you have a 
(Fia, 12.) 
n, about 1 to 1 1-2 inches wide, ^ 
!*4 of an inch thick; standard, 
1 1-.4 inches., .The mold-board 
T * vjR 
sketch of (Mie as it stands ready for use. The lana 
side is a bar of iron i i i o -•, 
and from 1-2 to 3 
about 1-2 inch by 
Frotii Amcrintn Agriculturinf of JS13 
ij^gress from the “Iron on a Stick’’ used for plowing in 1842 to the modern multiple bottom plow, jret there are men still living who remem¬ 
ber each stage in the wonderful development in soil tillage methods 
