Frank Gilbert

“ The savage lives by the chase and upon the bounty of untilled nature. The first steps toward civilization are to domesticate animals, and cultivate the soil with a rude kind of hoe. Both are alike primitive. The next step is to press the beast into service by supplementing the hoe with a plow. In that implement we see what might be called the original strand in the mighty cord which binds in co-operation man, brute and earth. By means of this agency of agriculture the beast of the field is made to toil, and purchases the benefits of human kindness at the expense of idleness and industry. ”

“ If only brief mention is made of others, it is because they really deserved but little credit, or their merits are forever buried in obscurity. It is proposed to set forth without exaggeration, the claims of the supreme inventor in this line to the grateful remembrance of the public. And by the public is meant not only the American people, but all who are fed from the ample granaries of this country, or share the benefits of the improved tillage, whether on this continent or in Europe, made possible and actual by the inventive genius of Jethro Wood. ”

“ The broad fields which he had inherited from his father were adequate immunity from the sad fate too frequently allotted to inventors. But no benefactor of mankind in the domain of mechanism ever experienced more iniquitous treatment than Jethro Wood did.
Before the year 1819 closed, his mission as an inventor was an accomplished fact. The popular name given his implement, “The Cast [Pg 38] Iron Plow,” from its entire abandonment of wrought iron in its construction, needed no change to be the noblest gift ever made to agriculture. In the ideal, hope had ripened into full fruition. ”

“ After the death of Jethro Wood, his son [Pg 50] Benjamin, who received the invention as a legacy, continued his efforts to wrest justice from the unwilling hand of the law. Nearly all his father’s failures had proceeded from the inadequacy of the patent laws, which were almost worthless to protect the rights of the inventor. Even now a patent is worth little until it has been fought through the Supreme Court of the United States. ”

“ Even as a boy, Jethro Wood showed plainly the drift and trend of his mind. The child was indeed “father of the man,” and almost from the cradle to the grave, he was an inventor. In his childish plays he seemed busied [Pg 10] with the idea which he ultimately perfected. Many curious incidents and memories are treasured among the traditions of his neighbors and friends. “When only a few years old,” writes a venerable man whose recollection spans two generations, “he moulded a little plow from metal, which he obtained by melting a pewter cup. ”

“ The said petitioner and inventor also, being perfectly convinced, as a practical man, that a model of his inventions and improvements will convey and preserve the most exact and [Pg 22] durable impressions of the matters to which he lays claim, he sends herewith a model of the due form and proportion of each, as a just exhibition of his principle and of its application to the construction and improvement of the Plough, requesting that the same may be kept in the Patent Office, as a perpetual memorial of the invention and its use. ”

“ Roswell Toulsby, Horace Pease, and John Swan, of that town, each took out letters patent for improvements in plows, and that prior to the issuance of any patent to Mr. Wood. Their improvements were of no practical value, and played no part in the development of this branch of mechanism, but their efforts serve to show the state of the intellectual atmosphere breathed by the man who was destined to solve the knotty problem which underlies the very foundation of scientific agriculture. ”

“ As if fortune could not be sufficiently ill-natured, his horse proved vicious and unmanageable, and thrice in the tedious journey threw the rider from his saddle upon the frozen earth, so injuring him, that he was barely able to go on. ”

“ Himself must either hold or drive.”
Born in comparative affluence, blessed with a good education, an ample library and a well equipped workshop, enjoying the correspondence of such men as Thomas Jefferson and David Thomas, he was unremitting in his endeavor to realize his ideal. “His chief desire,” to quote further from our venerable correspondent, “was to invent a new mold-board, which, from its form, should meet the least resistance from the soil, and which could be made with share and standard, entirely of cast iron.” ”

“ In a fourth kind, again, this point is larger and formed with a cutting edge by the agency of which it cleaves the ground, and by the sharp edges at the side cuts up the weeds by the roots.”
Pliny adds that the broader the plowshare the better it is for turning up the soil. These excerpts from the great Roman may serve to show the utmost reach of invention in that line, until a new impulse, begun in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century, was brought [Pg 67] to perfect development in the next century by an American citizen who died the poorer for his invention. ”

“ In the third place, the said Jethro Wood claims an exclusive privilege in the inventions and improvements made by him in the construction of the cutting edge of the mould-board, or what may be called, in plain language, the plough-share. The cutting edge consists of cast iron, as do the mould-board and land-side themselves. It is about twelve inches and one half of one inch long, four inches and one half of one inch broad, and in the thickest part three quarters of an inch thick. ”

“ It proved a day of triumph for Jethro Wood, and from that time he heard few taunts about the pot-metal.
“It was soon discovered that his plow turned up the soil with so much ease that two horses could do the work for which a yoke of oxen and a span of horses had sometimes been insufficient before; that it made a better furrow, and that it could be bought for seven or eight dollars; no more running to the blacksmith, either, to have it sharpened. It was proved a thorough and valuable success. ”

“ He immediately began to manufacture his plows, and introduce them to the farmers in his neighborhood. The difficulties which he now encountered would have daunted any man without extraordinary perseverance and a firm belief in the inestimable benefit to agriculture sure to result from his invention. He was obliged to manufacture all the patterns, and to have the plow cast under the disadvantages usual with new machinery. ”

“ By a screw bolt and nut properly adjusted above the top of the standard and acting along its side, assisted, if need require, by a wedge for tightening and loosening, the beam may be raised and lowered; and the mould-board, with its cutting edge, enabled to make a furrow of greater or smaller depth, as the ploughman may desire, and a latch and key fixed to the beam, and capable of being turned into notches, grooves, or depressions on one edge or narrow side of the standard, serves to keep the beam from settling or [Pg 31] descending. ”

“ Another kind, the common plowshare, is nothing more than a lever furnished with a pointed beak; while another variety, which is used in light, easy soils, does not present an edge projecting from the share-beam throughout, but only a small point at the extremity. ”

“ Four daughters of Jethro Wood alone remained to represent the family. In the winter of 1848 the two younger sisters went to Washington to petition Congress that a bill might be passed for their relief, in view of the inestimable services of their father to the agricultural interests of the country. Webster declared that he regarded their father as a ‘public benefactor,’ and gave them his most efficient aid ”

“ A right line, drawn by a chalked string or cord, or by a straight rule, diagonally or obliquely upwards and backwards from a point two inches and a half inch above the tip or extremity of the mould-board to the angle where the third and fourth sides of the mould-board join, touches the surface the whole distance, in an even and uniform application, and leaves no sinking, depression, hole, cavity, rising, lump, or protuberance, in any part of the distance. ”

“ He had always been deeply interested in education, and had fortune smiled upon him it is [Pg 48] not too much to say that in spirit, however different in detail, Jethro Wood would have anticipated Stephen Girard, Ezra Cornell and John S. Hopkins, in nobly founding a great institution of learning.
In private life Jethro Wood was a model man. ”

“ In view of the comparative ease and speediness with which the inventors of the present day, or their assigns, utilize really valuable patents, it would be inferred, in the absence of specific knowledge to the contrary, that twenty-eight years constituted a sufficiently long period for the enjoyment by Mr. ”