Jethro Wood, Inventor of the Modern Plow.

“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 is so fashioned and cast, that it fits snugly and nicely into a corresponding excavation or depression at the low and fore edge of the mould-board, along the side herein before termed the first side. When properly adapted, the cutting edge seems, by its uniformity of surface and evenness of connextion, to be an elongation of the mould-board, or, as it were, an extension or continuation of the same. To give the cutting edge firm coherence and connexion, it is secured to the mould-board by one or more knobs, pins or heads in the inner and higher side, which are received into one or more holes in the fore and lower part of the mould-board. By this mechanism, the edge is lapped on and kept fast and true, without the employment of screws. That the cutting edge may be the more securely and immovably kept in its place, it has a groove, or ship-lap of one inch in length, below, or at its under side, near the angle between the first and second sides, for the purpose of holding it, and for the further accomplishment of the same object, another groove or ship-lap, stouter and stronger than the preceding, is also cast in the iron, at or near the point of the mould-board, so as to cover, encase, and protect it effectually, on the upper and lower sides, but not on the land side.

“After the cutting edge is thus adapted and adjusted to the mould-board by means of the indentations, pins, holes, ship-laps, and fastenings, it is fixed to its place and prevented from slipping back, or working off, by wedges or pins of wood, or other material, driven into the holes from the inner and under side, and forced tight home by a hammer.

“In the fourth place, the said Jethro Wood claims the exclusive right of securing the handles of his plough to the mould-board and land-side of the plough by means of notches, ears, loops, or holders, cast with the mould-board and land-side respectively, and serving to receive and contain the handles, without the use of nuts and screws. For this purpose one or more ears or loops, or one or more pairs of notches or holders are cast on the inner side of the mould-board and land side, toward their hinder or back parts, or near their after margins, for the reception of the handles of the Plough. And these, when duly entered and fitted, are wedged in, instead of being fastened by screws.

“In the fifth place, the said Jethro Wood claims an exclusive right to his invention and improvement in the mode of fitting, adapting and adjusting the cast iron landside to the cast iron mould-board. Their junction is after the manner of tenon and mortice; the tenon being at the fore end of the land-side and the mortice being at the inside of the mould-board and near its point. The tenon and mortice are joggled, or dove-tailed together in the casting operation, so as to make them hold fast. The fore end of the tendon is additionally secured by a cast projection from the inside of the mould-board for its reception; and if any other tightening or bracing should be requisite, a wooden wedge, well driven in, will bind every part effectually, and all this is accomplished without the assistance or instrumentality of screws.

“The said inventor and petitioner wishes it to be understood, that the principal metallic material of his Plough is cast iron. He has very little use for wrought iron, and by adapting the former to the extent he has done, and by discontinuing the latter, he is enabled to make the Plough stronger and better, as well as more lasting and cheap.

“He also claims, and hereby asserts the right, of varying the dimensions and proportions of his Plough, and of its several sections and parts, in the relations of somewhat more and somewhat less of length, breadth, thickness, and composition, according to his judgment or fancy, so that all the while he adheres to his principle and departs not from it.

“Regarding each and every of the matters submitted as very conducive to the reputation and emolument of the said Jethro Wood, he relies confidently upon a benign and favorable construction of his petition and specification, by the constituted authorities of his country.

“Given under his hand, at the city of New York, this fourteenth day of August, one thousand eight hundred and nineteen (1819), in the presence of two witnesses, to wit:

This patent expired by its own limitation in fourteen years, when it was renewed or continued for another term of fourteen years. 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. Wood, of “the full and exclusive right and liberty of making, constructing, using and vending to others to be used,” the plow which he had invented. No doubt some members of Congress in refusing to continue the patent for a third term, acted from conscientious motives. But in point of fact, the period was occupied in a series of struggles calamitous to the inventor, to the history of which we must now turn. These struggles were unlike those in the lives of some other great inventors, notably, Goodyear and Howe. It was not a warfare for existence, the wolf of poverty staring him in the face. 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 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. And now, at this day, looking at the matter in the light of the past, seeing the absolutely incalculable benefits of the invention, it seems almost incredible that the American people, then even more than now, a nation of farmers, should not have hailed the new plow as an unspeakable boon, especially the community in which he dwelt, for Cayuga county then, as now, under a high state of cultivation, was and is peopled by a population of much more than average intelligence. But an inventor, like “a prophet, is not without honor save in his own country.” His neighbors gravely shook their heads at “Jethro’s folly.” With almost entire unanimity they agreed that the new contrivance would never work. His trials and difficulties at this stage of progress are told as follows, by one who wrote largely from personal recollection:

“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. The nearest furnace was thirty miles from his home, and, baffled by obstacles which unskillful and disobliging workmen threw in his way, he visited it, day after day, directing the making of his patterns, standing by the furnaces while the metal was melting, and often with his own hands aiding in the casting.

“When, at length, samples of his plow were ready for use, he met with another difficulty in the unwillingness of the farmers to accept them. ‘What,’ they cried, in contempt, ‘a plow made of pot metal? You might as well attempt to turn up the earth with a glass plowshare. It would hardly be more brittle.’

“One day he induced one of the most skeptical neighbors to make a public trial of the plow. A large concourse gathered to see how it would work. The field selected for the test was thickly strewn with stones, many of them firmly imbedded in the soil, and jutting up from the surface. All predicted that the plow would break at the outset. To their astonishment and Wood’s satisfaction, it went around the field, running easily and smoothly, and turning up the most perfect furrow which had ever been seen. The small stones against which the farmer maliciously guided it, to test the ‘brittle’ metal, moved out of the way as if they were grains of sand, and it slid around the immovable rocks as if they were icebergs. Incensed at the non-fulfillment of his prophecy, the farmer finally drove the plow with all force upon a large bowlder, and found to his amazement that it was uninjured by the collision. 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. Thomas Jefferson, from his retirement at Monticello, wrote Wood a letter of congratulation, and although his theory of the construction of mould-boards had differed entirely from the inventor’s, gave his most hearty appreciation to the merits of the new plow.”

In this connection may be told a curious episode, one in itself worthy of record, and strikingly illustrative of the perversities of fortune to Mr. Wood in those gloomy days. It is the story of a Czar and a Citizen.

All uncertainty as to the feasibility of the new plow having been removed, and actuated by that broad philanthropy which was one of the peculiar charms in the character of Mr. Wood, he desired to extend as widely as possible the area of his usefulness, and concluded to make the Czar of Russia, so long the chief grain exporting country of the world, the present of one of his plows. During the Revolutionary war, then fresh in the American mind, that great sovereign, Catherine of Russia, had been the staunch friend of this country, and that, too, without being impelled by jealousy of Great Britain. It seems to be a peculiar trait in the Romanoff family to admire liberty in the abstract, however absolute in practice. Sharing the prevailing good will toward Russia, Mr. Wood conceived this happy thought of making a truly substantial contribution to Cossack civilization, a civilization ever ready, with all its crudeness, to adopt foreign improvements. That gift, in one point of view slight, proved of great benefit to Russian agriculture. It is impossible to state the extent of actual advantage derived by Russia from that truly imperial gift. It was in effect giving to that country, second only to the United States in area of tillage, in proportion to population, the free use of the perfected plow. In an old copy of the New York Tribune, in its palmy days of Horace Greeley and Solon Robinson, the tale of the Plow and the Ring is unfolded. It runs thus:

“During the year, 1820, Jethro Wood sent one of his plows to Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, and the peculiar circumstances attending the gift and its reception formed a large part of the newspaper gossip of the day. Wood, though a man of cultivation, intellectually as well as agriculturally, was not familiar with French, which was then as now the diplomatic language. So he requested his personal friend, Dr. Samuel Mitchill, President of the New York Society of Natural History and Sciences, to write a letter in French to accompany the gift.

“The autocrat of all the Russias received the plow and the letter, and sent back a diamond ring – which the newspapers declared to be worth from $7,000 to $15,000 – in token of his appreciation. By some indirection, the ring was not delivered to the donor of the plow, but to the writer of the letter, and Dr. Mitchill instantly appropriated it to his own use. Wood appealed to the Russian Minister at Washington for redress. The Minister sent to His Emperor and asked to whom the ring belonged, and Alexander replied that it was intended for the inventor of the plow. Armed with this authority, Wood again demanded the ring of Mitchill. But there were no steamships or telegraphs in those days, and Mitchill declared that in the long interval in which they had been waiting to hear from Russia, he had given it to the cause of the Greeks, who were then rising to throw off the yoke of their Turkish oppressors. A newspaper of the time calls Mitchill’s course ‘an ingenious mode of quartering on the enemy,’ and the inventor’s friends seem to have believed that the ring had been privately sold for his benefit. At all events it never came to light again, and Wood, a peaceful man, a Quaker by profession, did not push the matter further.”

Perhaps another and quite as potent a reason why Friend Wood did not follow up this matter was that weightier affairs demanded his immediate and entire attention. One difficulty was overcome only to develop another. No sooner had he silenced the cavils of the farmers and demonstrated the value of his patent, than infringements upon his rights threatened to, and actually did, rob him of the fruits of his invention. “Uneasy rests the head that wears a crown” of genius.

The patent laws of that day were very imperfect, and there was a strong prejudice against their enforcement. The cry of “no monopoly” was raised. Mr. Wood had expended many thousands of dollars in perfecting his patterns and getting ready to supply the demand which he felt sure would arise for his plows, many of which, during the first few years, he gave away, that their value might be established to the satisfaction of the public. The stage of probation over, the plow makers of the country, defiant of patent law, engaged in their manufacture. His patent had fourteen years to run. In an incredibly short time their use by the farmers in all parts of the land became almost universal, and had he been allowed a royalty, however small, he would have realized a vast fortune. Instead of that he very nearly exhausted all his property in unavailing endeavors to establish through the courts his rights as inventor and patentee.

In 1833, when his patent expired, Congress granted a renewal for fourteen years. He was now bowed with the burden of years, and debts incurred in trying to protect himself against infringers. His remaining days were spent in vain efforts to maintain his rights. His broad and kindly nature had conceived noble plans for the use of the wealth which at one time seemed so nearly within his reach. He had always been deeply interested in education, and had fortune smiled upon him it is 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. If he had faults it is impossible to ascertain them, for it would seem, from the concurrent testimony of all who were acquainted with him, that

“None knew him but to love him,None name him but to praise.”

Although a consistent member of the Society of Friends, Mr. Wood was extremely liberal in his religious views, and did not conform to the peculiar dress of the sect. He had that truly Catholic spirit so admirably characteristic of the great Quaker-poet, John G. Whittier. Not even the cruel wrongs he sustained at the hands of dishonest infringers could turn the sweetness of his kindly temper. Nature had endowed him richly in every way, and no gift had been abused. Physically, his was the highest type of manly beauty. Six feet and two inches in height, perfect in proportion, courtly in manner, his presence was worthy his character.

We will not linger over the closing scene of his eventful life. That belongs to the sacred secrecy of private grief. His death occurred at the very threshold of a new conflict, and upon it his son and executor, Benjamin Wood, entered with intelligent zeal. The closing of it being reserved for two of his daughters.

The story of these new labors was well told several years ago by a journalist familiar with the facts, and we cannot do better than to unearth the record from its musty file, and by transcribing it to these pages, give it a kind of resurrection worthy its importance.

“After the death of Jethro Wood, his son 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. In those days so many obstacles were thrown in the way of inventors, and the combinations against them were so formidable, that Eli Whitney, in trying to establish his right to the cotton-gin in a Georgia court, while his machine was doubling and trebling the value of lands through the State, had this experience, which is given in his own words: I had great difficulty in proving that the machine had been used in Georgia, although at the same moment there were three separate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty yards of the building in which the court sat, and all so near that the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of the Court House.

“Similar difficulties had met Jethro Wood in his suits; so his son resolved to strike at the root of the evil by securing a reform in the laws. He accordingly went to Washington, where he remained through several sessions, always working to this end. Clay, Webster, and John Quincy Adams, all of whom had known Jethro Wood and his invention, aided his son powerfully with their votes and counsel, and he succeeded in securing several important changes in the patent laws.

“Then he returned to New York, and commenced suit to resist encroachments on his right, and the wholesale manufacture of his plow by those who refused to pay the premium to the inventor. The ‘Cast-Iron Plow’ was now used all over the country, and formidable combinations of its manufacturers united their capital and influence against Benjamin Wood. William H. Seward, then practicing law, was retained as Wood’s counsel, and the plow-makers engaged all the talent they could muster to oppose him.

“Heretofore it had never been contradicted that Jethro Wood was the originator of the plow in use, but now his right to the invention was denied, and it was alleged that his improvements had been forestalled by other makers. Again and again the case was adjourned, and Europe and America were ransacked for specimens of the different plows which were declared to include his patent.

“Mr. Wood also obtained from England samples of the plows of James Small and Robert Ransom. He searched New-Jersey to find the Peacock plow which was said to have a cast-iron mould-board of exactly similar shape to his father’s. Everywhere in that State he found ‘Wood’s plow’ in use, but he could hear nothing of the one he sought. At length riding near a farm-house he discovered one of the old ‘Newbold-Peacock plows’ lying under a fence, dilapidated and rust-eaten. ‘We don’t use it any more,’ the farmer replied to his inquiries, ‘we’ve got one a good deal better.’ ‘Will you sell this?’ asked Wood. ‘Well, yes.’ And Wood, glad to get it at almost any price, paid the keen farmer, who took advantage of his evident anxiety, two or three times the price of a new plow, and added the old one to his specimens.

“This motley collection of implements was brought into court and exhibited to the judges. At last, after the case had dragged its slow length along, through many terms, and the plaintiff was nearly worn out with the law’s delay, the time for final trial and decision arrived. The combination of plow-makers feared that the case would go in Wood’s favor, and made every effort to keep him out of court, that he might lose it by default. During his long entanglement in the law, he had contracted many debts, and one of his opponents had managed to purchase several of these accounts. Just before the case was to be heard for the last time, this worthy plow manufacturer, attended by a sheriff, and armed with a warrant to arrest Wood for debt, appeared at the front door of his house. Fortunately Wood had had a few minutes warning, and slipping out at the back door, he made his way under cover of approaching darkness to a house of a friendly neighbor. There he procured a horse and started for Albany, 150 miles distant, hearing every moment in fancy the clattering of hoofs at his heels.

“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.

“On arriving at Albany he found himself not a moment too soon. The case had an immediate hearing, and after three days’ trial the Circuit Court decided unequivocally that the plow now in general use over the country was unlike any other which had been produced; that the improvements which rendered it so effective were due to Jethro Wood, and that all manufacturers must pay his heirs for the privilege of making it.

“This was a great triumph; but it was now the late autumn of 1845, and the last grant of the patent had little more than a year to run. Wood again repaired to Washington to apply for a new extension, but the excitements of so long a contest had been too much for him. Just as he had recommenced his efforts they were forever ended. While talking with one of his friends, he suddenly fell dead from heart disease, and the patent expired without renewal.

“The last male heir to the invention was no more. On settling the estate, it was found that while not a vestige remained of the large fortune owned by Jethro Wood when he began his career, less than five hundred and fifty dollars had ever been received from his invention.

“The after history of the case is a brief one. 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; Clay warmly espoused their cause, and the venerable John Quincy Adams, with his trembling hand – then so enfeebled by age that he rarely used the pen – wrote them kind notes, heartily sympathizing with them. On one memorable day, while they were in the House gallery, Mr. Adams, at his desk on the floor, wrote them briefly in relation to their case. A few minutes later he was struck with the fatal attack under which he exclaimed, ‘This is the last of earth; I am content,’ and was borne dying to the Speaker’s room. The tremulous lines, the last his hand ever traced, were found on his desk and delivered to Miss Wood.

“A bill providing that in these four heirs should rest for seven years the exclusive right of making and vending the improvements in the construction of the cast-iron plow; and that twenty-five cents on each plow might be exacted from all who manufactured it, passed the Senate unanimously. But Washington already swarmed with plow manufacturers. The city of Pittsburgh alone sent five to look after their interests. Money was freely used, and the members of the House Committee who were to report on the bill were assured that during the 28 years of the patent, Wood’s family had reaped immense wealth, and wished to keep up a monopoly. The two quiet ladies, fresh from the retirement of a Quaker home, where they had learned little of the world, were even accused of attempting to secure its extention through bribery. It was the wolf charging the lamb with roiling the water. So ignorant were they of such means, that, though the Chairman of the Committee plainly told the younger lady in a few words of private conversation that a very few thousand dollars would give her a favorable verdict, she did not understand the suggestion till after an unfavorable report was presented, and the bill killed in the House.