Steel Plow Research Papers

The steel plow

The midwest changed farming forever.

Have you ever ate something that grew out of the ground? Of course. Some dreaded broccoli. maybe brussel sprouts, corn, wheat, bread, anything with high fructose corn syrup or sugar in it (everything man made), all of it made from seeds we sowed in the soil.
Sowing seeds was easy in the sandy soil of the middle east, and european soil was equally easy with cast iron plows. When we got to the moist and sticky soil of the midwest, it clung to the cast iron plows. When the savior of the mid west farming industry made the first steel plow, John Deere had made it exponentially faster, and easier, to plow the great prairie. The steel plow is arguably the most important invention in farming in it was hard to make a steel plow. The steel of early america had to come from the United Kingdom. John Deere got his from Sheffield, England for $300 a ton (). That is $7,000 a ton! The odds were further stacked against him because of the panic of 1837, which was essentially a mini depression. In 1839, he made ten steel plows. In 1840, forty plows were produced. And in the following years, John Deere made seventy-five, one hundred, and four hundred plows. (http://www.lib.niu.edu/2001/iht810102.html) When a new railroad decided to pass Grand DeTour, John saw that this was a dying town, so John moved to Moline. The mississippi river made it easy for john to export his plows, and The mississippi gave the factory an infinite source of water power. John found some other steelworks being founded in America. John got his steel from Lyon Sharb & Company from St. Louis for very cheap prices, but it was not of the same quality. he then found Jones and Quigg Steelworks in Pittsburgh a little while later which made far superior steel than anybody else on the market (http://www.lib.niu.edu/2001/iht810102.html). The new steel sources popping up around him made it cheaper to make the plows, and therefore cheaper to sell