makes for
strength of head, hand and heart, as were these.

In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five, James Oliver was over at South Bend, a
town that had started up a few miles down the river from Mishawaka, and
accidentally met a man who wanted to sell his one-fourth interest in a
foundry. He would sell at absolutely inventory value. They made an
inventory and the one-fourth came to just eighty-eight dollars and
ninety-six cents. Oliver had a hundred dollars in his pocket, and paid
the man at once.

Cast-iron plows formed one item of this little foundry's work. Oliver,
being a farmer, knew plows--and he knew that there was not a good plow
in the world. Where others saw and accepted, he rebelled. He insisted
that an approximately perfect plow could be made. He realized that a
good plow should stay in the ground without wearing out the man at the
handles.

The man who hasn't been jerked up astride of the plow-handles or been
flung into the furrow by a balky plow has never had his vocabulary
tested.

Oliver had a theory that the plow should be as light in weight as was
consistent with endurance and good work, and that a moldboard should
scour, so as to turn the soil with a singing sound; then the share, or
cutting edge, must be made separate from the moldboard, so as to be
easily and cheaply replaced. A plow could be made that needn't be fought
to keep it furrow-wise.

Without tiring the reader with mechanical details, let the fact be
stated that after twelve years of experimenting--planning, dreaming,
thinking, working, striving, often perplexed, disappointed and
ridiculed--James Oliver perfected his Chilled Plow. He had a moldboard
nearly as bright as a diamond and about as hard, one that "sang" at its
work. Instead of a dead pull, "it sort of sails through the soil," a
surprised farmer said. To be exact, it reduced the draft on the team
from twenty per cent to one-half, depending upon the nature of the soil.
It was the difference between pulling a low-wheeled lumber-wagon and
riding in a buggy.

From this on, the business grew slowly, steadily, surely. James Oliver
anticipated that other plow-wise Scot, Andrew Carnegie, who said, "Young
man, put all of your eggs in one basket and then watch the basket." On
this policy has the Oliver Chilled-Plow Works been built up and
maintained, until the plant now covers seventy-five acres, with a floor
space of over thirty acres and a capacity of more than half a million
plows a y